Domestic Divergence
by Chyme for the Rhyme
Summary: In another world, Komugi and Meruem live a little longer. But just a little.
1. The world changes

It is something small that starts it, a quick decision made lightning-fast in the back of the king's brain. And had he the time to analyse it, to run it through with the seemingly lethargic nature of proper thought, he would be horrified at how his instincts serve to betray him. His previous intentions, for both compromise and conversation, his aim of building a world where no more possible Komugi's would have to shiver under threat from beings like himself...well. In this world it all vanishes within the space of a second.

Because it is in that very second that he darts through the gaps Netero's defence barely allows, watching those golden arms as they stretch out to encase him in a universe of possible push-backs and crushing slams; all the while knowing that without Komugi's lessons on strategy-building, he would be lost within the clever angles of their palms. But even those lessons flee away, overcome by adrenalin as his hand reaches out, fingers crooking round the bend in Netero's skull. It is a stroke of luck, one that in another universe, perhaps, fate would decide not to gift him with.

Beyond the scope of his fingers, Meruem sees the other man's eyes widen. That, more than anything, still his hand. But then, like providence, Netero's single, remaining human hand gives a quick twist through the air before plunging straight down towards his chest.

Meruem does not stop to wonder at the other man's sudden desire for suicide. But he recognises the action itself as some form of mental compromise. So his fingers twist in, his mind flickering through diagrams he had made Pitou show him once during a fit of boredom. Almost carelessly his hand crashes down through the squelch of muscle, shattering bone in its wake, all to crush out the sparks of electricity that roam beneath and give Netero his shape.

And it is perhaps, another genius stroke of luck, that Meurem does not touch all the parts of Netero's shattered brain, that he misses the now sluggish crawl of disjointed electricity as it fires through the chattering neurons responsible for the constant pump of Netero's heart. Somehow, the man continues to breathe within the crude splash of artistry Meruem has made of his head. But his creation of the golden Buddha disappears, his arms falling free from their mantis-like movements with all the delicacy of a god being snipped free from his own pantheon.

Meurum springs back, regret briefly clouding his features, as the nen of a great warrior shifts and shakes into a barely recognisable flow. He lowers his head. 'I am sorry,' he says. 'You deserved a better fate.'

Disgust makes a jutting snare of his lip before it smoothes out into a bitter smile. He is angry, no, enraged at himself; because here he is, with all the patience of a lowly child, ending the fight in a way that robs his opponent of any sort of dignified choice. It is not the idea of cruelty that bothers him, oh no. It is an impulse far stranger, one that Komugi, in her gentle way, has taught him to give: respect.

He turns and jumps, leaving Netero's broken brain to run itself dry as the blood pools out of the crushed skull, running red and thick. He leaps through the twisted cones of rocks, clever eyes catching on their unnatural shapes and wondering at the phenomenon. A few minutes later though, when he is nearly out of range, he has no reason left for wondering at all; the rose bomb reaches out like a cruel god to shatter the landscape as Netero's heart, almost breathtakingly, shudders to a stop.

* * *

He barely blacks out. And yet, it is a still little discerning to come to, a few seconds later, and find that Youpi has to stare up at him now, his head barely coming up to his shoulder. There is a flutter, to his side, and he sees that Pouf's wings, once so magnificent against the sky, now measure the span of a single doorway. They are not quite children to his size, but Meruem finds himself shaking his head at the sight; their love has served him well, just as always, though he wonders briefly, if it should always be to their detriment.

'Pouf!' he commands. 'To the skies.'

With a strain and a shake, Pouf launches them upwards and Meruem, with little concern, watches the burns on his arms and legs sink down into the hue of his skin, as though they had never been. It matters little to him, for tucked away, deep inside, where no bomb can touch, lies Komugi's face, hovering in his memories like a guiding point.

'Humans,' he chuckles. 'Such frightening creatures.'

He does not miss the exchange of looks between Youpi and Pouf.

'You have always been faithful,' he says mildly. 'Though I know now that faith takes on many forms. The human I just faced placed his final faith not in his own abilities, but in others, scientists, I would imagine and ones considerably weaker than himself. What form, I wonder, does your own faith take?'

'You, the king, your majesty,' Pouf intones excitedly. 'The only king in the world!'

'And yet,' Meruem muses, 'I would exchange such a title for my name. It is Meruem. And I find myself wishing for you to addresses me by it.'

There is a shocked silence from Pouf. But Youpi shifts, his jaw cracking slightly as he learns how to move his now-smaller muscles.

'Meruem-sama?' he tries, ignoring the horrified glare Pouf sends his way.

Meruem smiles. He can already imagine how Komugi will say it, her voice trembling and catching on the same suffix she will no doubt place on the end. Hopefully, of course, he will teach her to say it simply, stripped of all honour that he might, once, have wished for it to embody.

* * *

It takes time but eventually he manages to seek out Palm, following her trail to the underground town Bizeff built for himself. She stands before him, barely a shudder in her soul. But the king knows better, can see the beauty in her as a light that grows and grows, feeling it flicker as his own nen reaches out to caress it.

'Why should I tell you where she is? After everything you have done!'

'Then don't,' he says simply, reflecting to himself that before, such a voice raised in anger against him would have made his tail twitch in irritation, just enough to make her bones crash and splatter against the floor seconds later. 'You've earned that right. You don't have to tell me a thing. I will simply do what I should have in the beginning; I will find her myself.'

And he turns, leaving Palm, tall, bright and shaking in her own light. He half-expects her to attack him, to try and claw at his back with nails that will be rendered feeble, barely as sharp as pencil against his skin. But she doesn't. Perhaps, because she, like him, understands now what it feels to have hope leech out from her soul.

Humanity, in some ways, has lost, after all. It's just as well for them then, he reflects, that he no longer has any wish to destroy it.


	2. The world moves

Komugi wakes. And, after a few wheezy breathes, starts to panic, mostly at the small space she can sense binding her. It's as though she's been locked inside a tree, the walls of which feel thin and stifling. She kicks out with her feet and scrambles with her hands, fingers primarily reserved for gungi pieces now meeting the slim steel of nails, their cool points feeling like flattened thorns against her skin. She presses down on them hard, unintentionally warming them with her frightened breath.

Am I in a coffin, she wonders. Have I been placed inside as a punishment?

She aims a feeble punch above her chest and is rewarded with a few splinters that dig harshly into her knuckles. Letting out a large wail, she mentally chastises herself. Her hands have only ever been good for one thing, after all, and it is hardly surprising that they have been wounded in a task almost anyone else could probably succeed at.

'Ah,' she says, knowing she is a fool to waste whatever oxygen her captors have allowed to seep in through the boards above. 'I'm sorry, Supreme Leader. I may not be able to make it to our next game. I hope you will not take it as an insult that my life was offered to a box, instead of to you.'

But then, almost as if the box has been insulted by her words, the world, or what little Komugi can feel of it, tilts alarmingly to the side and she gasps, grabbing hold of the blanket that has somehow been wrestled down to her stomach.

'E-e-earthquake!' she panics, all of her flailing as she, and the box she is in, is carefully dumped on the floor.

There is a brief pause as she struggles to realise that the wood around her has not cracked, has not bent sideways or inwards, not even to pierce her through. And then she hears chuckling. The sound is light, but hearty, as though the owner has made no move to place their palm against their mouth, not even to stifle the noise. It is also, to her great relief, familiar.

'S-supreme Leader?' she questions anxiously.

There is a sudden 'whoosh' and cold air touches her face, air that smells slightly stuffy, as though it has been nestled underground for far too long. Komugi feels the space open up above her body and breathes in deeply, her hands fisting into the blanket slightly before abruptly pushing it down, her legs feebly kicking up from underneath. Almost despairingly she feel the material stretch out between her thighs like a rope bridge, becoming taunt and tight.

'Uwah,' she complains, even though she really doesn't want to be a bother. It's unseemly, after all, for the Supreme Leader to be helping a blind fool such as her from out of a mess of her own making.

But then she starts, suddenly, as she feels a large hand gracefully separate her head from the pillow that has been carefully supplied beneath it, the thick fingers tangling against the unruly spikes that her mother could never quite tame, even after losing the spokes of countless combs within its hungry depths. She grimances inwardly as she feels the fingers pass over the slight bumps she knows other people could indentify as knots, ones she has never, throughout her life, tried too hard to untangle herself. It is strange; such things have never mattered before. But now, for some reason, she finds herself shying away from the Supreme Leader's hand, wishing him not to discover what other imperfections her hair might hide, ones that a mirror, if she had the eyes to view it with, would surely reveal.

'Aa-h,' she mumbles as she feels his other hand stroke carefully down her leg, almost as though he were inspecting glass for cracks. And then, with one, abrupt move, his fingers twist into the weighed-down space between her ankles and the blanket come flying off with one vast flap of movement.

'You should no longer treat your life so lightly, Komugi,' he says. 'It does not deserve to be flung away as though it were a speck of dirt; but if it would make things easier for you, I could give a command. Do not offer it to anything or anyone. Not even to me.' Then he pauses.

'And definitely not,' he says, with a hint of amusement, 'to a box.'

Komugi stumbles over her words, feeling mortified as he pulls her to her feet gingerly, as though he has every intention of stepping in to serve as a replacement for her walking stick. The thought fills her with an overwhelming mixture of both horror and gratitude.

'H-how embarrassing! To think that you would hear the last words of a fool as she rambles on inside a box that she was about to be rescued from...ah, I think even a baby, could beat down those walls with its wails, given enough time.'

'Have you spent much time with babies then, that you can make such a judgement?' the Supreme Leader asks, and Komugi shivers as her shoulders dip down into his shadow, the slight plunge in temperature causing the hairs down her back to abruptly stiffen.

The next moment a hand slides round to the curve of her back and pushes forward gently. Komugi feels herself straighten in response, her back gradually un-curving as she takes a deep breath, like a butterfly waiting for its drying wings to unfurl. And, surprisingly, as her lungs fill, it is as though gravity flows away from her, her skirts lifting and feeling lighter than they have done in years as her bones rise up beneath her skin, almost as though under guidance from the gods themselves. And it is all because she feels it there, each joint, each wedge of inwardly curving skin as the Supreme Leader's hand rests upon a knob of bone in her back, holding her spine steady with its warmth.

But of course, deep down, she has never really needed such a thing anyway. Not when soon, once again, he will rest on the other side of the board from her, all of his burning intensity reaching out to try and snare her with moves that, once upon a time, it took her years to come with. Now, with him urging her on, his ambition galloping towards her untested throne, such brilliance darts through her mind like a dragonfly, alighting on one new glorious move after another. It is as though he has risen up specially to make her grow.

'Ah,' she hears, through the haze of her mind, 'of course. You mentioned being from a large family. For humans, at least. Perhaps you are not the youngest?'

'No,' she manages. 'But I was, most days, as you can imagine, a disappointment.'

There is a heady silence. And she pretends to herself that his hand does not tighten at her back, that it does not twitch with the wish to crush something.

'Then here is a gift for you,' he says finally. 'One that will not result in disappointment from either of us. You wished to know my name, correct? It is Meruem. Take care that you call me by it. It has a more pleasing ring than a title.'

Komugi feels her heart sing, perhaps in wonderment.

'Meruem-sama.' She lets the name roll of her tongue and tries not to flinch when he expresses his disappointment in her automatically making a title out of it.

'A-ah!' she stutters, b-but I-I cannot, I mu-must not! You must not ask for the impossible Meruem-sama!'

She does not win the argument, of course. It is not even an argument, really. Meruem –sama declares, with all the finality of a god, that she will drop the suffix from his name, even if he has to win a game of gungi against her in order to do so.

'But for now,' he says softly, 'that can wait.'

* * *

Pouf mourns, out in the darkness and the biting wind, surrounded on all sides by crowds of people that the king, apparently, has no concern for. He cannot even be bothered to root out the spies that no doubt crawl among their midst and the very thought is enough to make tears stream down the side of Pouf's face.

'Stay here,' he remembers the king commanding. 'I still have one last task for you.'

Last? Last!

Pouf should take to the skies in his grief, should tear through the people around him like the carnivore he is. But loyalty, still such a sordid, heavy weight, anchors his feet to the ground. He waits, still as much a slave to his own biology now as he was back then, the day Meruem first tore his way into his life.

* * *

Komugi feels herself start as she is lifted out of darkness, the chill falling away from her skin as her hands reach out to gingerly touch the chest of the being holding her. It is a daring thing to do, but she dares nonetheless, despite the wretched thump of her heart as it shivers within her chest. In some ways, it is not that much different from playing a risky move on the gungi board.

'Supreme Leader...' she finds herself saying softly, the timbre of her voice an obvious contrast to the way his chest feels beneath her hands; smooth but hard, like the ridged surface of a shell. 'Forgive my stupidity, but you are not really a man...are you? O-or at l-least, not a human one...'

He hesitates, though his arms do not crush her for her insolence. But still, there is an odd fragility to this brief silence, and Komugi is suddenly aware of stupid things, like the swing of her skirt as it trails through the air, and the way she can hear him breathe, so much more loudly than when the gungi board imposes distance between them.

'No,' he says suddenly, 'I am not. I suppose this might feel like new information to you. Does it bother you?'

There is no uncertainty in his voice, at least none that Komugi can hear. But she smiles reassuringly, just in case.

'I have only ever heard the voices of my opponents in a match. For all I know, Meruem-sama, their appearance could be even less human than yours.'

He doesn't reply and for a moment Komugi worries that she has offended him somehow. But he merely twists his head and calls out for one of his servants.

'Pouf!'

Komugi hears someone step up behind them before a sound tears through the air; it sounds like the fabric of a tent being stretched from its poles as the wind blows through. But there is a sharpness to the sound too, and Komugi feels the air beat against her face as something bursts out behind them both, coating them with the coolness of its threadbare shadow. She wails, stilling abruptly as they rise from the ground before she clamps a hand over her mouth, the fear firmly catching hold of her tongue. For she has never seen birds take flight or felt the thrum of energy as an aeroplane lifts into the air. She has never even been close enough to a flying object to understand the gust of motion it sometimes produces. But she understands, instinctively, that she is being rushed away from one of the few things she has always been sure of, even if she has to, at times, beat a stick reassuringly along the line of it.

She swallows and summons all of her courage. 'Meruem-sama,' she whispers. 'A-are you, o-or is your companion...an angel?'

He starts at that, his fingers pressing a little deeper into her skin and Komugi is bewildered to hear, from behind them both, a low, plaintive moan.

'Quiet, Pouf,' says the king, a little crossly. 'No,' he continues, and Komugi feels it, the moment he turns his attention to her. 'I am far from that. Though I think, by some human standards, that I am no longer a devil or monster either. And I was always outrageously far from being a god, though I did not realise that soon enough.'

'O-oh.'

'Do you fear I will drop you, Komugi?'

'Eh? No, I w-would never presume such a thing!'

But even so, she feels her hands drift up to gently place themselves against his neck. They shift and half–scrabble against his skin, but even so, she cannot feel the reassuring bulge of a tendon there, no steady pulse point or shake of breath. Not even the obvious roll of an adam's apple; Meruem is uncluttered of all the normal, human things.

'What are you searching for, Komugi?'

For the familiar, she thinks.

'I am searching for...you.'

Meruem is silent for a beat. And then he says: 'I understand. You do not have the 'eyes' to know me the way other humans might.'

'I don't need them,' she says resolutely. 'I know your voice, your mind, the way you feel for gungi. It is more than enough.'

'No, Komugi. I have had the privilege of knowing your face. It is unfair that you should not be given the chance to know mine.'

She feels her toes curl at how firm he sounds. As though the idea of inequality between them is a disgrace. Almost daringly her hand reaches out, quivering slightly as it falls against his cheek.

'Later,' he admonishes slightly and she draws her hand back instantly, the fear of her presumption causing a shiver to run through her bones. 'I will give you all the time you require to map my face. But not now.'

There is another wretched moan from behind them both.

'Quiet, Pouf,' the kings says once again, though it is not without a little pity.


	3. The world breathes

Meruem takes her to a place where there are no people. The building they now inhabit, amidst the smell of dust and carefully-cropped bamboo shoots, is small enough for three people to happily wander through its rooms, but no more. And it feels stagnant somehow, unlived in; Komugi can feel the freshness of the air from outside as it roams through windows that possess no glass. It is a wry contrast to the atmosphere around her, of the way it reaches out to grasp hold of her being, almost as though it has been starving for people to tread through its doors once more. And speaking of doors...

She cringes, once again, against the loud squeal of the door as it rocks off its hinges, half-broken. She had felt the weight if it travelling through Meruem's arm into her side, as he had pushed it open to carry her within. And now his curiousity won't let it lie; she can hear him drag his knuckles against it with all the unruliness of a disgruntle child, growling slightly as it lets out another pitiful squeak.

'I do not believe I have ever had the pleasure of oiling a door,' she hears him mutter. 'But if an ordinary human can rebuild one, then this is nothing for me to sneer at.'

'Your Majesty...please...such a task is unworthy-'

'Pouf. You may go.' There is a hesitance then, in the way Komugi feels him stand against the door, his shadow spilling over her and blocking out the warmth of the sun. 'Perhaps I am doing you a cruelty. You cannot fight what you are; but still, I have decided how I wish to live. And it cannot involve your devotion. Truly, I believe now that I was never deserving of it.'

The cry that rings out in reply is barren and shrill and Komugi finds herself eerily reminded of the marsh birds that migrate over her family's house at the onset of evening, their lonely cries becoming the perfect accompaniment for her brother's ghost stories. She shivers. There is something wild bubbling out beyond that door, something beyond her, something savage and animal-like in a way she cannot understand. For a moment she feels caught, scared, as though a wild bear has her in its sights. But then, abruptly, the feeling fades.

There is some sniffling. And then she hears the familiar stretch of a tent being pulled apart by the wind as the wings that helped carry her here, start their harried beating to the skies. Komugi can feel the resulting breeze stir her hair, the coldness of the floor beneath her feet sinking in as she shudders. This place around her feels like a pantry, one that gaps open for the rest of the world to spill through.

'Komugi,' she hears Meruem say as the coolness of his shadow shifts away from her. 'I can take you back to your family if you wish it. But I would prefer...no, I would like it, if you would remain here with me.'

She turns to him, almost stumbling in her glee.

'It would be my greatest honour! Truly, it might perhaps help them, if I were no longer around to burden them...' But then she hesitates. 'Ah...but I would prefer us to have a board for gungi first, if...if that's alright?'

'Without food? Or proper windows?'

She frowns, unable to recognise the teasing lilt to his voice. She has not been around him long enough to recognise his humour, at least not when it does not possess a murderous tinge to it.

'I can survive without food or sleep for a while. But without gungi, it feels as though my mind starts to shrivel! And I do not want to be a brainless fool as well as a hungry one.'

'No,' he says, sounding even more amused. 'Forgive me. It was a foolish suggestion.'

He takes a series of trips without her after that, leaving her to count possible moves through her head as her fingers take up the idle childhood pastime of swirling through the dust. Through memory she sketches out the lines of the board, albeit wonkily, her heart pining for the feel of the pieces beneath her fingers.

'I wonder if I should focus my defence more tightly to the left of the board,' she mutters, one hour. Then in the next: 'No, the archers there need more cover and the spy...that could play a more pivotal role if I shift it just so...'

She snaps her mouth shut as she hears the familiar tread of his feet entering the doorway. Then there is a series of thumps, one of which sounds like a bag rolling across the floor.

'Food,' he says shortly, as if that is explanation enough. And then, rather more gingerly, he leans down over her as he carefully settles a gungi board between them.

'Ah! You found one!' Komugi leans over, her hands sweeping across the wood enthusiastically. 'And it feels so smooth! What quality!'

'I made a trade with an old man who had no need for it anymore,' Meruem says proudly. 'It is the first time I have ever traded with words alone and without the threat of violence. I believe he was grateful for that, though still a little frightened.'

Noticing Komugi's hands impatiently roaming over the board, he smiles and brings out a velvety bag, it's opening looped round with a set of golden tassels. With a clinking shift, he turns it upside down and scatters the pieces free.

Komugi visibly brightens at the noise and playfully humming to herself, starts to pull some of the pieces over to her side of the board. Then she hesitates.

'Ah...which ones are black?' she asks sheepishly.

Meruem's laughter shakes the whole house to its rusty hinges. It surprises him slightly in its force and he feels his hands curling down to grasp his stomach, as though seeking to console the pleasant ache that is left behind. Across from him, Komugi's mouth falls open in similar shock before she tilts her head to the side with a smile.

'I did not know you could sound so happy, Meruem-sama...'

'Neither did I.' But the infectious joy is still in his voice, and it emboldens him to ask something that still niggles at him. 'Komugi. I have a request. If I win, I wish for you to call me by my name. That and nothing more.'

Komugi hesitates, her hands drawing back from the pieces slightly. Then she stiffens, drawing herself up regally as though there is something beyond air to stiffen her spine against. 'And if I win, I will touch your face,' she declares. 'You said I should, after all.' Then she hesitates. 'Um, you see, you once asked me if there was anything I wanted if I won. And well, I guess...' she trails off sheepishly, her royal posture magically undone as she shifts and rubs the back of her head awkwardly. 'I guess now...there are a few things I want, after all.'

Meruem doesn't admonish her the way she fears he might. 'That is good,' he says softly. 'A life without desire would be an empty one indeed.'

And then with a decisive clink, he pushes all the black pieces over to Komugi's side of the board. He feels like playing with the white ones this time.

* * *

Komugi wins, of course. Meruem knew it was coming, sometime after his twenty-sixth move. But the loss still digs in deep, still causes his heart to flutter with both pain and pride. And of course there is the usual curl of anticipation, one that emerages on his face in the form of a wry grin.

I want to grow, he thinks, to grow and evolve and see how much further I can push along Komugi's abilities. Speaking of which...

The girl in front of him breathes in deeply. Then, she sticks out her hands, turning them so he can see the tremble in her palms.

'I-if you please, Meruem-sama,' she says bravely, eyes almost watering at the strain of her daring, 'give me your face.' Then she cringes slightly, shoulders bunching up beneath her dress. 'Ah, un-unless o-of course, you've changed your mind...'

'Foolishness,' says Meruem a little tensely, his tail snapping to the side in obvious displeasure. 'I do not go back on my word.'

Komugi seems to mull this over for a moment. Then she turns to the side, and to Meruem's horror, begins crawling towards him, the fingers of her left hand brushing against the side of the board in an earnest attempt at naviagation.

'What are you doing? There is no need for such a display.'

Komugi flinches at the sharpness of his tone, but her face doesn't lose the determined frown, nor do her fingers cease their weak sweeps of motion at the edge of the board. On someone else the movements would look graceful, perhaps, like a form of ritual or dance. But Komugi's fingers only seem to take up elegance when they clasp round a gungi piece. Here, her fingers curl when they don't need to, scrambling at the grooves of the board as though in fear that they're taking up too much space.

'I did not mean to insult you,' she says steadily.

Meruem watches as one of her knees slides forwards.

'I just...I do want to know you Meruem-sama. I did not mean to reject you or your generousity. So I will come to you. As an apology.'

Meruem's tail twitches. Then he sighs and, in a move he would never have considered in the past, bends his back for someone else.

'I'm here,' he says lowly.

Komugi stills. Then her hand leaves the board, reaching out through the air towards his cheek. It lands there, her palm settling automatically into a cupping motion, one that somehow seems to smooth out the slight twitching motion of her fingers. They brush up, around the dip of skin that announces the beginning of the hollow that trails down to his eye, before briefly getting confused by the lower ridge of his shell-like scalp. Meruem has to reach up once, to help untangle her fingers from the loose flap of skin that hangs down in front of his ear, slapping against both their hands with all the firmness of a harness. Komugi blushes a little, but continues her exploration, her fingers making light, feathery glides across the surface of his skin. They touch carefully, as though worried that the slightest pressure from them would cause his skull to cave.

Meruem almost chuckles at that.

At last they alight on his mouth, her thumb carefully pushing at the firm folds of skin like a curious child. Meruem's jaw unhinges and he lets his mouth slide open, just wide enough to let said thumb slip inside.

Perhaps Komugi is unaware of human propriety. Or perhaps she has decided not to care. For she does not flinch or draw away, though her cheeks do become doused with a fiery red, one Meruem likens to a certain species of flower. It is not a little ironic that it is the very same that Netero's bomb was named after.

'I do not know the faces of many men, Meruem-sama. But even if I did, I do not think I would prefer them to yours.'

It's an ill-judged compliment, Meruem thinks. And one with a flawed premise. But nevertheless, it is something he can live with. It's not as though Komugi will go around, becoming aquainted with the face of every person she meets, after all.

He sucks at her thumb gently, a little curious to see her reaction.

Komugi reddens even more and draws her thumb back with a decisive 'pop'.

'Sorry,' she mutters, 'but I wish to play another game.'

Meruem's face immediately lights up. Now that is a desire easily granted.

* * *

'Komugi,' he says after their sixth game, 'I am dying.'

Komugi freezes, her general in the midst of capturing one of Meruem's archers. She swallows and closes her fingers around the offending piece, swiftly drawing it round to her side of the board. Meruem closes his eyes softly with a sigh.

'At first I did not wish to tell you,' he says. 'I feared it would ruin our time together. But to deny you knowledge...I feel it would be a sign of disrespect. And...this poison. It is infectious. I have only been affected by a little, just enough to seep away my life slowly, in a matter of years, or perhaps even months. But if you stay, you will end up affected too.'

Komugi blinks. Then, with all the grace in the world, her arm rises, but this time free of the characteristic curl her hand usually places round the pieces. Instead, a solitary finger points at him and Meruem draws himself up, eyes widened at her daring.

'It's your move, Meruem,' she says, without so much as a quiver infecting her voice.

Slowly, he straightens with a smile.

'So it is.'


	4. The world trembles

There was a severe edit to this thing, in order to remain compliant with 's rules. If you wish to view the full thing, it can be viewed at the Archive of Our Own site, under the same title.

* * *

Sex is not something Komugi has spent a great deal of time wondering about. Honestly, she has never really considered it as an option. Who, after all, would want something like her?

Evidently, Meruem does.

'Komugi,' he says, his voice neither hard or soft, framing her name as a statement rather than a question. 'I wish to touch you.'

And despite the lack of the inquisitive lilt most people would mark the end of such a statement with, Komugi finds herself reaching out for his face, smiling softly as his cheek tilts into her palm instead. She feels a rumble beneath the muscle, one so quiet that perhaps only another blind person could feel it. Not quite a purr, but more of an expectant hum, as though he already believes that she will never say 'no.' It's not quite true though and they both know it.

'Meruem,' she says. 'You actually waited.'

By that she means he waited until the sun fell from the sky, waited for what the other people call darkness to rise up and touch the land. Komugi can feel it is night because of the way it makes his skin cool to the touch, the faintest trace of his heartbeat feeling like the only warm part of him left. She can feel the careful, stubborn thump of it beating along the ridge of her palm, echoing inside the flicker of veins in her wrist as he slides her hand up, pressing just that little bit harder.

'Human social customs are not all strange,' he observes, tentatively picking at the sleeve of her dress, as though urging it to come off by willpower alone. 'I can understand why a lover would not wish the sunlight to illustrate the form of their beloved to another. I suppose, in some fashion, the night provides an illusion of privacy.'

'Nobody will ever come out here,' Komugi reminds him, blushing as a memory escapes into a head, one involving a chorus of passionate cries as she slid the gungi tiles across a makeshift board of hardened mud, knowing that her parents were christening the conception of her newest sibling just across the room. 'And s-sex isn't something people just do at night, either.'

'I am aware.' There is a strange rhythm to his voice, one that almost gives birth to a chuckle. And Komugi almost flails away from his touch  
at the thought that he finds her amusing.

'I-I am sorry if my body does not please you,' she murmurs.

He scoffs. 'I have not even seen it yet: not in its entirety. And what makes you believe I would find the result anything but pleasing? Do you think me so shallow?'

'N-no! I would never inst-inute-'

He cuts her off, insistently pulling at the sleeve of dress, in the way perhaps an impatient child would. 'Komugi...you mean to make me wait longer?'

She sighs, feeling him stiffen as she opens her eyes. 'I reserve this for gungi only, as you know,' she informs him, as crisply she can manage with the nerves holding the rest of her body hostage. 'But that is partly because of my love for it. And I never really believed I could discover something to rival it until I met you, Meruem.'

It is strange to say it aloud. Usually she reserves such admissions for the board, flirting with risky manoeuvres only he will grasp the significance of. Perhaps this will simply be another. And with that thought, she attempts to yank her dress over her head within one solid movement.

But there is a painful yank on her scalp and she freezes, arms crossed over her head as the dress bunches up around her face. The material almost chokes her, its thin creases and bunched-up rolls pushing up against her mouth as she sniffles pathetically, feeling only a little distraught that she is rubbing mucus into the inside lining of her dress. The rest of her just feels overwhelmingly embarrassed. She grunts and gives another fruitless yank. And then wishes firmly for the ground to somehow swallow her up.

'Meruem-sama!' she wails, forgetting in her distress, about how he will no doubt flinch at the added suffix. 'I'm so sorry, but I'm stuck!'

He does not laugh. But he, very firmly, steps over and dips his hands into the mess she has made of herself. Within a few seconds he wriggles the dress collar free of her grasping white strands, carefully pressing her rebellious hair down against her scalp.

'So embarrassing,' she sighs once she is free.

'Is that so wrong?' Meruem asks. 'I am the only one to see, after all.'

'Ah.' Komugi wrinkles her nose up with distress. 'In some ways it becomes more embarrassing because you are the one to see...'

'Ridiculous,' mutters Meruem, but he waits nevertheless, for the blush to vanish from her face before he leans over to play with her hair.

And Komugi knows that to him she is not simply a tile on the gungi board to be played, but somehow, now, she feels as though this is the closest she has ever been to becoming one. It is in the way he starts to touch her, half-stroke and half-glide, at first tentative as though unsure she won't break. She has heard this in the way he plays, she thinks. Some caution telling him to place his tiles down like a series of stepping stones for his mind to follow, a careful, delicate undertaking that results in a series of soft thumps. But then of course, later, come the more confident moves, when he is sure he has landed on a winning strategy. Then his pieces clank down with ferocity, with a more assured tap. And so it is now, his movements against her skin becoming more self-assured, particularly in the places where she snorts out laugher or starts wriggling with a protest about how she is 'not sure that that is decent, Meruem!'

'I am a king no longer, Komugi,' he says sternly, 'but do not think you can tell me what does or does not feel pleasurable. Your reactions speak for you. I see no shame to be gained in refusing me.'

She pushes more firmly on his wandering hand and he freezes instantly.

'Unless of course,' he ventures cautiously, 'you are in pain?'

She shakes her head furiously, mouth gaping as she desperately searches for words.

'Good,' he says, sounding entirely too pleased, and continues to lick at the swell of her thigh. He is not being particularly aggressive about the movement though, and for that Komugi is grateful. His tongue is a curious thing though, with the way it dips and slides down to her shin before circulating back up to her thigh. Here he pauses, before giving her skin a delicate nibble.

Komugi giggles. 'Stop Meruem! It's like you're going to eat me!'

His teeth vanish from her thigh at once. Komugi waits there, feeling slightly foolish at the way her leg dangles in the air with only Meruem's hand to support it.

'Eat you? Don't say something so foolhardy.'

Komugi frowns. Meruem's voice does not waver, not exactly. But there is a tremor lying there beneath the words, some undercurrent of emotion she has no real name for. It reminds her, strangely enough, of the way she had felt before his servant, Pouf, had left. Like something dark and savage is waiting for her.

'Perhaps we should stop.'

Komugi frowns, digging her elbows firmly into the ground at the resigned disappointment she hears in his tone. Then, mustering as much of her strength as she can (it's a pitiable amount, she knows), she forces herself up off the ground, launching her hands onto his chest with a wobble. She waits there warily for a second, but Meruem freezes beneath her hands, his only movement being to curl his fingers a little tighter round the leg that he still, stubbornly, supports off the ground.

'Komugi?'

'No,' she states firmly. 'I do want this. Even if perhaps, you should bestow this honour on someone more suited-'

'Do not insult me,' he cuts in, anger evident, 'or do you think my judgement so impaired that I am incapable of making the best choice for myself?'

Her mouth drops open a little at this.

He chuckles darkly in response.

But determined now, Komugi taps at his neck firmly. Then, as he bends down obligingly, still with the mocking laughter pouring out from his lips, Komugi shoves herself forwards, her mouth smashing into his. She winces slightly at the painful thump of her skull meeting his face, unsurprised when he does not so much as flinch. Still, she pushes forward, shoving her tongue inside to tangle with his own, feeling pleased when his chuckle dies a stifled death, his chest shaking slightly with the force of holding it down.

Komugi holds no illusion of winning this battle. Indeed, Meruem has already placed her leg back down on the floor (though perhaps there is victory enough in that, she thinks) to bring his now free hand up to her neck, pushing her hair aside with a gentle force, as though he were doing nothing more than briskly drawing a curtain aside. Now it's his turn to push forward slightly as, gradually, Komugi feels herself melting down onto the floor beneath him, her legs pushed aside as his chest hunkers down inside them. He acts as a solid weight that keeps her trapped and a little nervous.

Komugi lets his tongue swirl against her teeth, offering a soft joust with her own. She will let everything else unfold, but all in its own time and, quite hopefully, before she loses her own mind. Because Meruem begins to push his tongue back in, determined to find his own rhythm. And at the sudden swell of pleasure she experiences, her breath loosens from her lungs. And so it is that Komugi, once again, is lost.

* * *

Months pass and Komugi half believes herself to be in heaven. They play gungi everywhere, from inside the cool stone walls of their home to the sunlit grass of the outside world, their backs pressed against the shadows that swirl out of the bamboo forest at their sides. Sometimes, Meruem gathers her close and takes her to the mud-licked stones of the river, his hands dipping out to catch the leaping flash of trout as they writhe through the bubbling waters beside them. Or at least, that what Komugi assumes happens; there is always the quick whirl of an occasional splash as they play and a series of thumps as a fish flaps to their side and breathes its last.

One day she sits up and frowns. 'Forgive me for disturbing your thoughts, but isn't it cruel to let them flop like that?'

She feels him visibly still across the board from her, his mind drifting from his current predication of being boxed in at all sides from her aggressive tactic.

'No wonder your plays have been so assertive today,' he observes. 'This has been bothering you for a while.'

She loves him a little for stating this as a fact instead of as a question. No one else has ever bothered to know her well enough to tell.

She squirms in embarrassment. 'I have never dragged out my victory against you Meruem. I just thought, well, it would make me...pleased, to know you do not do the same to this creature.'

'Very well,' he says simply.

The next second there is a familiar splash followed by a singular thump. Komugi listens carefully but there is no muted sense of rattling taking place in the pebbles beside them, no wrestling thump as a fish writhes its way over ground it cannot simply stroke through with its fins. After a while, she looks up, beaming.

And from then on, true to his word, there is only a single thump, whenever a new fish finds itself beached on the shore beside them.


	5. and then cracks

Honestly Komugi is happy with their new life, just the two of them, smothered by feelings and a place that is just their own. Because when she was with her family, surrounded on all sides with the clutter of rakes and the stampede of noise that constituted their daily routine, she was alone. There was hardly enough space to think, to let alone open a gungi board up between them. And where else could she go? The only place she could be free were the tournaments, the one she got her father and brothers to take her to when they weren't busy working.

So Komugi has had no other friends to gossip with, not really. No one to gift her with a traditional tale, not one, to warn her of the way it will feel as though there is a parasite digging its way into her life, rolling into her stomach with all the subtleness of a stone. At night she rolls and shifts, gasping in her sleep, but it still feels difficult to breathe, even when the weight comes from inside her instead of against her chest. Sometimes it feels as though the very air itself is the one pressing down and hurting her.

Meruem is as attentive as always, bringing her a pan of warm water in the night and stroking her hair softly as she bends over to breathe ripples into its stillness.

'What is it?' she asks afterwards, touching her nose with a grateful finger. Her nostrils have never felt so clear; it is as though something has burrowed its way into them and shoved aside years-worth of snort and flower-sprung allergies.

'Menthol crystals,' he says. 'I sprinkle them over the water and let them dissolve. It is their vapour that you are breathing in.'

'Oh...I wondered about the smell.'

He chuckles softly and despite herself, Komugi feels herself preen, pushing up under his fingers as though she were no bigger than a cat. His laugh is a wonderful thing and she delights in prying it from him whenever possible.

Then she turns quiet. 'Meruem,' she begins tentatively. 'I am sorry; I cannot read books and I have never been taught all the old stories about how to bring a child into this world. I know...nothing.'

'I am far from an expert at nurturing either,' says Meruem and Komugi perks up; beneath his tone there is a sense of uneasiness, as though he is holding back other impulses. But his hand remains warm and careful on her head, pressing against her hair with a reassuring firmness and later, in a few moments, she relaxes. It is not for her to know the dark deeds he once did, no doubt to protect his kingdom.

'I talk to them sometimes,' Komugi says with a flush, pressing her hand down against the stomach that rapidly now, is beginning to feel like a shackle. 'You may think it foolish. But I feel closer to them when I do so.'

'Ah,' says Meruem. 'A parent's sentiment. I can understand the instincts behind such a thing.'

He is silent for a beat, and then Komugi finds herself reaching over to take his hand. She trails her fingers over his joints carefully, as though the bones beneath are fragile, just as swift to crack as an uncared-for gungi tile. The bulky weight of muscle beneath shifts, smoothing out under her palm as though abruptly relaxing.

'It will be more than instinct that moves you,' she assures him, half-marvelling at the confidence that seeps into her tone. 'You will love it, the way I do.'

He doesn't move. But within his silence, Komugi can hear the unspoken question, one he is still a little too proud to ask; how can you be sure?

She smiles.

'Because of the same protectiveness I have felt whenever I breathed life into a new move; my heart trembles in the same way now, as it has done all those other times before. You see, this is the first time it has done so for something other than gungi. And you are the same way; you would not get so distressed in our games, if you felt nothing when I destroyed the moves you put so much thought into.' She lowers her voice. 'Creating something, I think, is a powerful thing; you give life to it and it is painful when you feel it die, whether it is a move played in a game or something...more. And you hate to lose, Meruem.' She breathes a little more firmly. 'You put your heart on the board, just as I do.'

He does not reply other than with a small sigh, which, for him, Komugi decides, is the closest he can manage to something that, in a human, would sound more choked-up. She gives his hand a feeble squeeze and then attempts to settle herself at his side, thumping her head down upon his knee with an awkward bump.

'Oww...'

He simply gives her head a rueful stroke in comfort. It's kind of him, Komugi thinks. Her parents would have simply heaved out a put-upon sigh. It's not long however, before her musings give way into an uneasy slumber, although she can't help the occasional wince of movement she gives as her stomach pulls at her, despite her mind being buried in dreams.

Meruem watches her for a while, before his hand move from her hair to her neck, carefully depositing her head onto the floor. Almost bashfully he tucks a bale of straw beneath her, hesitating each time she lets out a little 'mprf', and then, almost unceremoniously, he sprawls out beside her, propping his head up upon her belly. He finds himself listening carefully to the shift of movement inside, eyes narrowing as a half formed limb pushes through liquid to carelessly drag on the outskirts of Komugi's womb. He winces as she stirs, gritting his teeth at the snivelling whimper that escapes her.

It's a strange, almost craven impulse that grips holds of him then, and it tells him to speak into the thin, flimsy barrier of skin that shields his child from the world he once attempted to rule, to speak, even if the one he is addressing cannot listen.

'You must treat your mother better than I did my own,' he tells it. 'She loved me enough to give me a name, and I did not realise what a travesty it was that I threw both it and her life away, before it was too late. So it may be hypercritical of me not to ask you to do the same. But I will ask it nevertheless. No, I will demand it.' He hesitates. 'Komugi is not like me. I doubt she will even be like you. She is weak, weaker than most humans. I ask you, as humbly as any parent can ask a child...no a life-form can ask another life-form, not to harm this one.'

Komugi turns with a sigh, more snores rolling free from her gaping mouth. Meruem smiles fondly, reaching over with a single finger to lift the line of drool away from her chin.

'There will be pain of course,' he murmurs. 'Many things in life come with it, I find. But I must ask you to treat her as gently as you can, all the same. She has put her heart into you, you see.' He pauses to stroke his fingers over her belly, letting them rest briefly above the dip of her navel. 'And, though it may be foolish, I shall strive to do the same.'

* * *

Komugi breaks open with a cry a few months later, feeling a slick rush of liquid spill out between her thighs. It does not dry rapidly, or crust over that familiar itch of dried blood. But she knows, perhaps with something similar to a deep, animal instinct, that the wetness between her legs will thicken and run out with that familiar squelch of blood, this time running with something akin to a gallop; all in all, very different from the trickle that escapes her body each month.

But before the blood comes the pain, doused with the strain of waiting, as each interval before the earthquake inside claims her, shortens, making her buckle and grind her fist down into the waiting cusp of Meruem's steady palm. Even now, with the pain making her strong, she cannot hurt him. In this, at least, she is grateful.

But even with this relief warming her inside, she gasps and throws her head back as her body is wrecked with another bout of pressure; it is almost as though something is grinding down on her pelvis with the intention to shatter bone.

Well, she can't help but think wryly, it is not so far from the truth, is it? And there is more of a 'someone' hammering on the door down there, rather than 'something', a door I'm not strong enough to widen by myself.

Perhaps she gasps this out loud without realising or perhaps Meruem just knows her too well. Because he bends down towards her, his breath ghosting over the shell of her ear as he whispers firmly, with no room for argument: 'you are strong enough for this. It is just another battle. Play, Komugi. And win.'

Had she not been a fool, with no room in her skull for anything but gungi, thinks Komugi, she might have come close to wishing him harm. But as it is, she finds herself, remembering the feel of the board beneath her fingers and the way each piece waits for her to move it, to make it burst into beauty that only a few, like Meruem, can truly appreciate. And now this baby, is waiting for her to do the same.

She grits her teeth and pushes.

* * *

Later, after eventually clawing her way back into consciousness, Komugi wishes she could see her child's face. It is an odd sensation, this wishing for something she can never really truly miss, at least, in the way one mourns for something lost. The closest she has come to such a sentiment is in the past, when she wished to be less of a burden on her family. Although she had been free to govern her own movements, it was always with the worry of bumping into a stray clay pot, or brushing aside something precious and grinding it into dust.

She can feel her child's features of course; her fingers play upon the bud of lips, the brush of eyelashes, with all the delicacy that she usually reserves for a game of gungi. But she also knows that across her child's body swims a wash of colours, things she knows that are sometimes used as guidance for seeking out a name. Something that is, of course, denied to her.

Colours, as a whole, have always confused her. She knows she needs to be mindful of her hair, that the 'whiteness' of it, as lectured to her by her mother, is stained easily, rendered dirty by something as simple as dirt. She knows it acts as a chameleon this way, turning either brown or black, colours that she gathers, by the disapproving tut of lips around her, that do not look good hanging down from her scalp.

'Meruem,' she finds herself saying, 'what colour is our child's face?'

She feels him freeze next to her, half-caught in the tentative prodding he is giving their child's cheeks.

'I was not aware it would mean anything to you.'

He sounds rueful, as though this is something he should have foreseen and Komugi hastily tries to correct her mistake.

'Ah, no! You're right, you're right, it will not mean the same to me as to you! I mean...simply...what do the colours make you feel? You see, I know colours like green and blue are supposed to soothe, and other colours look bold and strong, so I was just wondering, what they made you feel looking at our child...I do not want an unsuitable name, one whose sound clashes heavily with the way she looks.'

'I do not think it works that way,' says Meruem, now sounding, to her relief, slightly amused. 'But I can understand your viewpoint.' He pauses, before reaching over to trap her fingers with his own. 'Up here,' he says, carefully dragging her hand up to the back of the child's skull, '-these are white, the same white as your hair.'

Komugi feels her breath catch as her fingers touch feathers, soft like the down of a baby bird. They curl and tickle, still tentative against the sway of air that stirs them, as though unused to navigating an environment free from the liquid swirl of her belly. Perhaps, thinks Komugi, later on they will straighten, becoming stronger like an adult bird's as she grows.

'White, 'continues Meruem, more gently, as though mindful of the awe that makes her hand tremble beneath his own, 'is a colour that symbolises many things. It is blank, easily dirtied or torn in two by any other colour, no matter how pale or weak. But it is precisely because of how easily it clouds over and is lost, that when it is allowed to stand by another colour, it shines, bold and fierce. You and your hair, have always felt that way to me.

...We are so different, Komugi. But this child is what happens when we come together. And this white gives me hope that she will be as strong on the inside as you.'

Komugi sniffles and lets out a hiccup.

'Do you wish me to continue?'

'Y-yes,' she stammers, 'even if my heart breaks or I die happy, right now, p-please continue.'

He gives her hand an almost painful squeeze. Then pulls it down to slide over their child's neck, twisting it round to touch the tiny dip of a collar bone. He lets their hands rest there for a while, as though they've found a placeholder, as though their flesh have become brief bookmarks against their baby's skin, before he takes up their fingers once again and glides them down to the bludgeoning slope of his small chest.

'Our child's skin is a green colour, same as my own but lighter.' He pauses. 'In fact, a great deal lighter. This gives me hope once again, that she will take after you more than me.'

'But still,' says Komugi bravely, her voice trembling far more than her careful fingers, 'she is green enough to see yourself reflected there?'

Meruem pauses. 'Yes.'

Gently, Komugi tugs her fingers up against his own, and loathe as they both are to let the pulse of their child escape their senses, Meruem lets her draw away.

'I have a suggestion for a name,' says Komugi shyly, though the smile that twists her lips afterwards is anything but unsteady. 'I...it feels right. Not ungracious. Like naming a move.'

She feels a twitch of movement at her side; Meruem moving his tail in a curious curve, much like a cat.

'Let's hear it,' he says.


	6. And then a new world comes

Meruem's movements, he knows, still sound strong and heavy, at least to Komugi's ears. He does not tell her that he no longer has to be careful when touching her, that he no longer fears the snap of bones under skin when he pulls her in close.

Late, in the dark, he listens to her breathe, watches as it emerges in the air in the form of a heavy snore. She has little choice in the matter; her nose, a useless receptacle of oxygen at the best of times, remains cluttered with snot, a steady dribble trekking out whenever she shifts. At least this time it is not with pain anymore; it is this thought alone that comforts him.

Their child, he is glad to note, does not seem to have inherited this faulty breathing, or at least, none of the visible allergies that cause Komugi to live a life littered with heavy intakes of breath. The baby breathes, now a few months old, and growing rapidly, far faster than human standards should allow.

His ears fetch out that small heartbeat from the darkness, lying hidden among the blankets like a bird's egg in a nest and Meruem feels himself breathe out, more in relief than in necessity. At least his hearing has not failed, has not stuttered and been unable to seek out the things that should be clearer than any other.

But when the day comes, as it inevitably does, he looks out through the doorway into a world of muted colour. The greens of plant life, once so vibrant, now fade into a murky mess of hollow blues and greys. And the path that leads up to the door, through a swirl of shrubbery and rocks, appears duller than it should. The dust that passes through it, rolling with the wind, attaches itself to handfuls of dirt and Meruem has no doubt that they are as brown as ever; but to his eyes they now lack that spark of vitality, a certain rustic gleam of clay-red.

'So it has finally come for me then?'

'Death?' comes the reply.

Meruem does not move, not even to turn his head as the rustle in the bushes announces someone's presence.

'Oh yes, it comes, Ant-King, it comes.'

Meruem grimaces, his toes digging long furrows into the boards. Once they would have snapped, even without him having to exert such pressure.

'Three life forms. My, you've certainly been...busy.'

Meruem's head snaps round and the owner of the voice grins, his mouth stretched up into a sly, taunt line. He oozes such passivity in the face of Meruem's anger that it chafes.

'Not to worry. Killing the weak is not something I find particularly entertaining. I can, of course. But...there is a life form in there that has the potential to deliver something close to what you once were. And I'm always interested, you see, in potential.'

Meruem relaxes slightly.

'Ah,' he says gravely. 'You came for a challenge. '

'Hmm, yeeess. ' The other man's eyes rake over his form apprehensively, a rather bitter twist developing within his smile. A playing card snaps out from between his fingers, and the noise is like a form of auditory whiplash, at least in contrast to the thin cracks of noise that slither through the surrounding plants as the wind scraps against their sides.

'You look as though you're ready to leave this world without a fight.'

'It was not my intention to embark on one, no,' says Meruem drily. But still, his tail, despite the weakening coil of muscle within, starts to twitch, alert and erect. Some of his old pride still flows through his body, that old, hungry demand for a ruler who wants to be acknowledged above all else.

'Ooooh,' purrs the voice. 'How absolutely lovely. Yes, yeeess...I love it, that flare of spirit so early in the morning.'

'I am afraid that it is not something I am letting out on your behalf,' says the king. Even for this much, he can still, at least, be frightening.

'Ah, such a pity. I wish I had come here sooner.'

'Not here,' says Meruem choosing to ignore the almost lavish sounds of longing escaping out of his opponent's mouth. It strikes him then, how sloppy he has become, locked away with Komugi in their hideout. How his nen has weakened, almost failed him, when it matters most of all.

And buried deep down, almost wrecking his insides as a result, lies guilt. Guilt for the way Komugi has started to snuffle, these past few months, more loudly than before. How her fingers have trembled slightly around the pieces she loves to hold steady.

And his doubt, it grips him now, along with the curiosity of whether the poison has left its mark within the genes of his child. It should have done. When his child had first rushed out into the open air of this world, he had expected her to be distorted, weak somehow, mutated with extra limbs and gristly mutilations that the progressive nature of his species would never have allowed. But the bomb, whatever its mark, has chosen not to add any unnecessary tweaks to his child's skeleton. But on the inside, Meruem wonders guiltily, how many years has she been left with?

Not for the first time, he wishes Neferpitou had been at the palace when he left and that he could have asked for the servant's medical expertise. Sometimes, he wishes too, that he had not been so hasty with his love for Komugi, that he had prevented himself from touching her at all. It had been unfair, selfish even, to rush a child into this world, even if it had never been his initial intention.

Still. Regardless...

I have been happy, thinks Meruem. Happy. And at peace. That was something I could never have imagined before, back when I knew and understood nothing but animal impulse.

He laughs to himself softly. Oh yes, he thinks, amused, and how much of this final outcome has been driven by such impulses? Perhaps, even now, I have not managed to grow as much as I might have wished.

He treads his way out of his house, his shadow spilling free from the forms of his sleeping family within. He tries to bat down the protectiveness that grips him, which rises up with a howl from within.

After this is over...after he is over...there is no guarantee that this strange man with a strange hunger will not come back and put a stop to the two heartbeats behind him, the ones fading from his hearing with every step forward he takes.

'Rest assured,' says the other man, now falling into step beside him. 'I can exercise patience. You have to, when you suffer from such sweet agonies...there is nothing worse that eating fruit before it has began to ripen. And she'll grow better, with her mother there.'

To a human, perhaps, it would not have been a great reassurance. But to Meruem, who knew, from the onset, that his child's life would be anything but easy, it is as stalwart as a promise made in blind faith.

* * *

Their fight lasts six hours. He manages to rip off a leg and even, at some points, to rip apart the bungee gum Hisoka seems to be so fond of attaching to awkward spots. The other man likes to slot them into the dark junctions between branch and tree, into crevices that appear almost invisible to the king's eyesight – not quite failing, but nowhere near as sharp as it was in his fight against Netero.

But weak as he is, the king gets to work, devouring the other's nen, gum and all. His stomach, though it should be disintegrating, falling into inert juices that slither and slap against the poison that it has no way of combating, still, despite its decay, works thoroughly, breaking down the vital sparks of life that flare through the sticky, ink-like substance.

'Quite a carnivore, I see,' Hisoka eyes him, fascination dancing in those sharp depths that serve as eyes. 'Still, in some ways you are a child. So delightfully inexperienced. I wish we had more time together, I really do. '

He totters slightly, his leg letting out a squelch, despite how firmly it's strung to both the muscle and the bone in his torn-off shin. If Meruem concentrates enough, he can make out the flicker of pink that loops itself round and in between the gristle and gore, like a child's first attempt at messy embroidery.

Hisoka flicks a fingers and a branch, worn down by the weight that has been imposed upon it from their constant rebounding from trunk to trunk, snaps, flying forward with unnerving precision into Meruem's face. Then it bounces away, a thin line of pink sending it into the darkness beyond the groove – truly a vanishing act worthy of a magician.

It causes Meruem to barely hesitate. The next second he dodges the knife-like snap of playing cards that brush past his neck.

'You're dying and you still have better instincts than a man I fought like this once, when he was in the prime of health,' notes Hisoka, his voice echoing out of the gloom.

Meruem's eyes narrow. 'All motion, if it is from a living thing, holds a pattern,' he says slowly.

And then spins, crashing through the undergrowth, before his fist launches its way into Hisoka's face. Hisoka throws himself back, the line of his torso falling smoothly away from Meruem's bunched-up fingers, so elegantly that it almost curves. It is like watching a diver in slow motion, all grace and precision, though Meruem can't help but be pleased at seeing the slight crease in Hisoka's forehead as he falls away. The next second though, before he disappears back into the gloom, Hisoka's eyes flare, brightening visibly in glee. It, almost painfully, reminds him of Neferpitou and Meruem makes a sound, one that could have been a 'tch.'

'A few months ago, that would have killed me,' says Hisoka. 'But now your muscles tremble under the strain of using even a fraction of the force they used to expel. Still, I congratulate you. Not many have managed to strike my face.'

And then his face darkens as he moves back under the shadows, a very telling smirk rising to the forefront of his expression. It hangs there, delicate as the gossamer on a spider web. 'But you are oh, so fidgety...' He coos. 'So fidgety because not a few miles away there are some weak little things you looong to protect.'

Meruem tries, he really does. But he can't help but flinch in a very, very human reaction. It is that that undoes him. Because it is in that moment that Hisoka lunges.

* * *

Komugi wakes and at first, is not worried. There is nothing, nothing at all to alert her to the fact that Meruem is not out hunting for some food, or even to bring her back a new flower he'd found. She can still remember the feathery press of the first one he gave her, the edges of its heart-shaped petals flattened by the wind-swept miles of travelling he had done to get it back to her.

'I saw a man give a woman this as a gift,' he said by explanation. 'I assume it was a mating custom of sorts; you humans do like to make a dance out of gestures and words, after all.'

She had smiled as she took it, her fingers carefully combing over the bumps in its flesh-like stem.

'It's lovely. My father used to sometimes pull out a bundle for my mother, usually on her birthday. I was never allowed to touch, of course.'

'Oh.' He does not shuffle, not quite. But he does reach down and curl her fingers more firmly over the stem, before gently urging them up to where it thickens, sprouting out into the part that unfurls the most beauty. There she touched the damage that even Meruem could not protect it from.

'You may touch now,' he had said gravely.

'I am truly grateful.'

Komugi is stirred out of her memory by a casual thump. And then an object rolls across the floor, with all the slow rolling gravity of something too misshapen to be used as a ball.

'Meruem?'

'Ah,' says a foreign voice, one that makes her gasp, 'so that was his name? He never told me. Though he did tell me yours...'

There's a pause, and she's not sure why, but Komugi has the distinct feeling that he's there, in the doorway, casually leaning a shoulder against the sides that Meruem had spent several afternoons carefully sanding down with rough paper, all so she would not catch a splinter one day when her clumsy fingers fumbled for the edges. She bristles.

'Excuse me,' she says firmly, 'but who are you?'

He chuckles. 'At least you aren't foolish enough to be rude to me. But, mmmm, there is no real reason for me to give my name to you.' He hesitates. 'You're blind,' he states and there is no real surprise in his voice, but there's a flicker of...something there. Apprehension?

No, thinks Komugi, he sounds a little too like Meruem, when he's discovered something new, something that makes him change his mind.

She straightens her spine. 'Ah...begging your pardon,' she says, trying not to sound too timid, 'but I am a fool who knows nothing about social customs other than bowing or scraping to those who are superior. And that's practically everyone I meet. The only place I am someone's equal is when I sit across from them, with a gungi board between us.'

'Hmm,' he says, 'but I do not know the rules.' Then he sniggers. 'To think, that you are challenging me!'

'I have nothing else to challenge you with,' says Komugi quietly.

There is a pause then. Komugi strains and hears the crisp rustle of paper being shuffled together, their edges ruffled by firm fingers. No, not paper, she decides, too sturdy. Card, maybe?

The man sighs. 'I suppose it's useless to ask you to a game of cards?'

'I-I'm so-sorry, but I would not even know if they were upside down if you placed them before me.'

'Ah. Well, I do have time...'

The man settles before her, pulling the gungi board between them so fast that Komugi has to dig her fingers into her dress to prevent herself from yelling. She grits her teeth at the clatter of pieces as they slide off the edges, jarring against the cold ground below. But she utters not a word of protest.

'Which colour would you like?' she asks instead.

'White,' decides her new student, 'it looks so good on me, after all. Or next to me, in this case.'

'I'm...sure it does.'

The man chuckles. 'Who said I was referring to the pieces? Your hair reminds me of an old friend, that's all.'

Komugi blinks, her hand absently coming up to trail through a loose lock. She had never even thought...

The man chuckles again. 'Not used to flirting, are we?'

'I am sorry, but I have only ever had one person do so with me. And even then, I am not so sure that he knew what he was doing.'

Komugi's voice becomes quiet, hushed as she coaches Hisoka through the moves, through all the do's and don't's that dictate the way the pieces travel across the board. She shows him how to arrange towers out of captured pieces, how to stack different positions on top of each other and how the 2D predications become 3D as the game evolves.

'Bear with me,' she says. 'I am not used to moving slowly with gungi. And we are almost done. Soon, we will play for real.'

And they do. It is nothing like playing against Meruem. Hisoka, though he stumbles with his moves at first, trying to re-align himself with a game he is unsure how to play, favours the tricky and the sly. He play indirectly, never letting his strategies become too straightforward. And while Meruem understood the principle behind such a thing, he has never spent a whole game in subterfuge. Never once, has he been afraid to let his moves move out into plain view.

Komugi sighs. 'You do not possess the same crippling caution that Meruem used to,' she lectures softly. 'But you trip yourself up with your methods. You are easy to read when you lie in wait all the time. Even the surprise you try to spring on me loses it's vigour.'

'The motion of every living thing, leaves behind a pattern, huh?'

She isn't sure, but something about the trailing lilt at the end of his sentence, makes Komugi think he is smiling.

'Or perhaps, ant-king, it is the mind, that is the true source of the problem. I see where you learnt your philosophy from.' He pauses, shifting one of his pawns to a free square and narrowly avoiding capture by her lieutenant-general. 'Ah, I feel forced to resign, Komugi. I have the feeling I could play against you for years and never come close to victory.'

'If I am your equal in this one thing...' Komugi takes a breath. 'No, your superior...does that mean you can tell me your...' she trails off again, thinking better of her question. 'I'm sorry. I still want to know your name. But I want to know about Meruem more.' She lifts her finger, and though she tries, she cannot prevent the trembling that seizes hold of her entire arm. 'That...' she points at the 'ball' from earlier. 'That...'

'Is his head, yes.' It is spoken bluntly but with no real cruelty. In fact, had it been said anywhere else, one might have mistaken Hisoka for simply lifting a fact from memory and uttering it with the same neutral distain.

Komugi takes a breath. And another. And then one more. Soon they are exiting out of her mouth in rapid succession as her hand falls to the floor, pressing against the ground as though she has forgotten the curl of her legs beneath her.

Hisoka does not apologise. He simply brings his cards back into his fist, pressing them together to produce a soft, rippling crease of sound.

'Goodbye Komugi,' he says smoothly. 'It was more pleasurable than I thought, meeting you. Not at all boring. Had you been born with a different, better body, you might even...no. Then you probably would not even have caught the king's eye in the first place.'

Komugi does not even hear him leave. Her arm crumples, her knees roll and her face flattens itself against the floor. But despite everything, she continues to breathe.

* * *

Komugi does not move. She stays silent for a long, long time. Within her mind it feels like centuries pass, a casual blankness to the time that rolls around her, time that she once would have filled with endless strategies, piling new life into old, tired moves that would have had scholars writing textbooks about them for decades.

All that is gone now.

And then, jagged, like the stroke of a knife, comes her baby's cry.

It is as though lightening strikes her and Komugi crawls forwards between desperate, half-choked breaths, half-crumbling to the ground as she reaches out for her infant's wails.

'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, she thinks. I thought – stupidly- that we had more time.

'There, there,' she murmurs, forcing the words out as she draws her baby close. Her lip trembles as her fingers fumble at the soft down of feathered hair that pokes up against her palms. 'I'm right here.'

A soft tread of footsteps stir the dist before the steps that Meruem used to tread, so soft that Komugi's all too human hearing should not be able to pick it up at all. But Komugi whirls round fiercely, some deep instinct screaming out to her and causing the hair on the back of her neck to rise. She hunches over her baby defensively. 'E-excuse me, b-but who's there?'

The stranger pauses, and the next step they take is almost explosive, at least in contrast to the previous silence. Their pretence at being nothing is over.

Komugi cringes, furrowing her brow as the steps come closer, into the house that she can no longer protect. They sound light, almost free in the way they lift weight from the floor, as though they carry the poised grace of a practised dancer. It is that, more than anything, which makes Komugi's brow lift with recognition.

'You...I'm sorry, but you've come too late. I'm so sorry.'

'You would always have been powerless, no matter the situation.'

Komugi shivers at the coldness in his voice, reminded dimly of the moment Meruem stood in the doorway between his rage and her, in what seems like a lifetime ago.

'I'm sorry,' she says again, almost helplessly. What else can she say?

'Is that his child?'

Strangely enough the question wakes something in her, a doused flame of pride that she has only ever let shine in gungi matches. She draws herself up, proud and tall, feeling strangely as though she is back in time at the palace, Meruem's fury and tail pointed straight at her throat again. 'Our baby,' she whispers fiercely. 'Our. That is something no one can take away.'

The next second there is a blinding pain. It tears through her throat and Komugi barely has time to whimper, to shiver and crawl away before she slumps over. But never once, does she lose her grip on her baby.

Within a flash, Pouf is there, his hands supporting the infant's head more than Komugi's body, which he, rather brusquely, pries away from the treasure she still holds.

'You are right,' he says in a carefully modulated tone; it wouldn't do to distress the king's progeny more than necessary after all. 'Your copulation is a fact. But, like all facts, it can be hidden.'

Very gently, he brushes the blood-matted hair of the baby away from its forehead and smiles.

* * *

Note: I'm sorry. But it's not over yet...and honestly I could not see a way to give a traditionally happy ending to this pairing. I think, no matter what, there would have always been a tragic end to their tale. Meruem would have been hunted down for the rest of his life by people with differing motives, and the events that happened canonically seem to suggest that that some tweak of human inventiveness would have been his undoing. In the Hunter x Hunter world, after all, it only takes one wrong move, one wasted second to die or doom oneself.

I know some people might be upset with this decision and turn away. And that's alright. But like I said, it's not over yet. And both characters have left their mark on the world in more ways than one. In this world, at least. And there's still a little more here, I'd like to explore.

And if you dislike the turn this tale has wrought, feel free to pretend this story has ended and re-read the first five chapters. You'll always have that.

But either way, I still have more to tell.


	7. It shifts

The palace, the place where he _failed_ is in tightly guarded ruins. The marble interior is split, both jagged and torn by the craters of a golden meteor shower, one that nearly, but not quite, cost Komugi her life. Pouf smiles at the memory, and then at himself. Such foolish sentiment! And it has dragged him back here, to the sight of his failure.

Nothing will go wrong this time, he tells himself, certain of the future.

The new queen, the untainted one, wiggles in his grasp. Pouf watches with interest, as the mouth opens and a thin slice of noise comes tumbling out, not quite the wail of a human infant but a wail none the less.

The thoughts inside however, the ones that prompt the mouth to open and close, that cause the wail to cut out and then renew itself with the passing of time – those are harder to distinguish. They register light and warmth, hunger and cold, and respond accordingly with a pleased hum or an indignant stutter of fury, one that registers closely to a wavelength of pain. Pouf is more than familiar with this last one. He has caught hold of the sensation time and time again, when capturing prey for substance.

'Come,' he says smoothly, 'I will keep you safe.

For some reason the child wails louder.

Ah, thinks Pouf, perhaps it is the unfamiliarity of my voice? That human female, as I recall, used to stutter...He makes a face; surely he will not lower himself to such an indignity!

The child's cry reaches a crescendo.

'H-hush,' tries Pouf.

The child does not stop crying. But Pouf registers surprise beneath the blur of uncomplicated thoughts. Surprise and perhaps...wariness?

Pouf flies away quickly before the guards, flimsy soldiers that they are, notice. And congratulates himself warmly. He arches up, into the cold updrafts of air. He does not know how sturdy the new queen's lungs are, how much they can take before the air becomes too thin for them to swallow down. So he stays out of the clouds, deciding to swoop low among the lines of the trees, their branches passing in a whisper above his hair.

He presses onwards, until, starting with a trickle, new thoughts press into his mind, foreign ones with the distinct clarity that separates them from the animal rabble that rustles in the bushes below. Humans.

He smiles and dives headfirst into a nearby village. There is confusion, of course. Yells. The firing of some guns and maybe even the throwing of some kitchen knives. But in the end he drags away a woman, drags her into the overhanging shadow of the trees and away from the thick colour of blood that smears her living room floor with the colour of rust. She trembles in his grasp, the drooping bulge of her stomach heaving in time to her frightened breaths. In, out, in out –Pouf watches the tender line of it flare out into his sight before it wobbles, loosened with the brash purple wrinkles that speak of a weight that once hung within.

'Please,' the woman begs, 'my child, my child...'

She reaches out to Pouf, even though he clearly has no baby to hand to her. At least not her own.

'Feed her,' he demands. 'And your baby will be returned to you.'

The woman sniffs and her hands, though trembling erratically, manage to force themselves into a careful stroking motion, pressing down upon the feathers that puff out of the blankets in Pouf's arms. She sniffs again, but this does nothing to prevent the snot running in a stream down to her mouth. Pouf has to rein himself in sharply. But the twitch of memory, of an unpleasant, well-loathed face irks him, makes his mouth tighten into a thin line.

With trembling fingers, the woman reaches up to her blouse, flinching slightly at the crust of blood she has to flick off the buttons. She peels away the material with a rigidity speaking of shock, her motion cluttered with jerks and sudden heaves of breath. She is almost robotic by the time she bends down to push a brown, round nipple into the queen's mouth.

And even though her breasts are fatter than Komugi's and the taste slightly more acidic (Pouf can register surprise and bitterness, welling up inside the mind of his charge) the queen sucks. And then swallows. Soon she is gulping down the milk, behaving like the baby she really is.

Pouf purses his lips thoughtfully. The king never had a childhood, so to speak off. This will require a great deal more work.

'Please,' the woman begs tearfully. 'My baby...give him back...'

Pouf stares straight through her. The woman's baby, of course, is still where he left it. On the stairs, lying in a puddle-like curl with a small hollow where its brain should be. She had stepped right over it a few minutes ago, her eyes landing on the floral adornment of her wallpaper as though her child had not just been dashed below her like the unruly drape of a curtain. Human shock, thinks Pouf, is a useful thing.

With her eyes fastened on the trees around them, the woman carefully tugs her nipple away. And no sooner than she has done so, Pouf's teeth jam into her shoulder.

Well, he thinks to himself. Would you look at that? I'm still rather hungry myself.

* * *

There are things to entertain a child. These are necessary, Pouf reads, because time, to a child, drags on without end. It does not fly for them, unless filled with pleasure.

At first, he tries bribery. He flies out and picks only the most succulent of meats, the fattest of limbs from children who run to him with exhilaration in their eyes, muddy fingers outstretched to try and trace out the colours of his wings. He tries to wean his child, (no, he reminds himself, the queen, the one I will not let down this time) into them, dripping blood into her wailing mouth.

It works, to varying degrees, but still, much to Pouf's displeasure, she prefers milk. Personally, he blames Komugi's genes.

But still, the child grows. She does not turn away from human meat, but she also does not tear into it with gusto. She is fond of colour but cannot paint, preferring to splodge the blood of her playthings into the ground.

'Ssshia...' she trails off as her tail, a fluffy, unkempt thing swishes nervously along the ground. 'Sshiaraoff,' she attempts again, her tongue twisting the pronunciation as it drags along the roof of her mouth. She pauses then, flushing miserably.

The sight is enough to rouse Pouf into a miniature rage. 'Your Majesty,' he says coolly, siphoning his rage off into the taunt quiver of muscles that hold his wings. They shake slightly, as quickly as a hummingbird's as he continues. 'As I have stated before, you may call me Pouf.'

The child (no, thinks Pouf keenly, almost desperately, the queen), frowns. And ducks her head towards the floor. 'That seems disrespectful,' she says softly.

Pouf stares at the small being before him. In moments like this, when he sees the queen huddle into a downtrodden mess of nerves and self-doubt, he becomes aware that this is not Meruem before him. There is no self-righteous conviction to hold this small frame steady. Instead there is only a small, quivering voice as she speaks, violet eyes she sometimes likes to run along the line of the floor, half-hidden behind a rakish line of feathers, instead of a hard turtle-like shell. And a tail with no barbed end, hanging fluffy and low like a fox. It strikes Pouf once again, that this queen does not possess the body of a warrior, though it is at least one that is far stronger than a human. No, this form is...it is...something perhaps human hunters might like to stuff and mount on their walls; they seem unbearably fond of things with feathers and fur-lined tails, rather than those who possess hardened skin and scorpion-like limbs.

'Would you like to go hunting?'

The queen perks up immediately. 'Oh yes!' She says the thrill of anticipation running right through her bones and making her tail stand on end. 'I love it when they try to run away!'

There is a slight ache there, nestling inside Pouf's heart as it witnesses the same manic light in his charge's eyes, the very same as the luminance that once flowed through Meruem's.

At least, he thinks, there is enough chimera-ant in him for him to behave accordingly.

* * *

The queen grows. She feasts. She demands. And occasionally, she listens.

Don't listen to their pleads, Pouf tells her. The words of the weak hold no merit to those of us who are strong.

The queen listens. She eats, despite the screams. And tries to crush down the strange feeling she gets, when the flicker of pain in their eyes becomes steady, taunt and heavy alongside the fear. Somehow, to her, the hunting is more fun than the actual killing. Floppy limbs, she finds, do not make for good sport.

Humans live in family units, Pouf sneers another time. That is because a human individual is a weak thing, a lonely life that desires social interaction; but that is an illusion, something the subconscious hides behind. Really, it is a base need for survival. A human life lengthens if surrounded by other targets for predators like us to choose from.

The queen is not quite as accepting of this. She crawls and prowls through the outskirts of towns, seeing laughter, and the muscles it shakes, both actions that shimmer out through the lights in people's windows in a great visual display of love. She notes how smiles seem to herald these noises in beforehand, how their size grows in accordance to the fondness they have for the others around them.

Strange, she thinks, human are strange. I have never laughed, not even once.

Before him, beyond the barrier of glass, a child stretches their mouth open, showing the small lines of their milk teeth glowing dimly within. To the queen, they are like pearls under muted light and she reaches up with a finger, tucking it under her lip to trace the outlines of her own teeth. They are not so dissimilar, she realises with a start; there are varieties to the structures inside his mouth, molars and canines, slow-moving grinders for plants and sharp, jagged peaks for tearing meat into small strips.

She takes her finger away, stunned. Why has she never paid attention before? Ants don't have teeth, at least not mammal-like teeth.

Inside the room, under the harshness of artificial light, the child starts to shake. And then laugh, though the sound is dimmed slightly, under the weight of the queen's thoughts. Her eyes move to the child's belly, watching it tighten and then jiggle, a slave to the laughter that erupts from the chest. Unbidden, her free hand slides down to flow over the curve of her own stomach. And then she frowns.

I must look very stupid right now, she thinks. Annoyed, she straightens, her face bearing the full force of the light inside as it spills out of the glass in front of her. The family don't notice her. But they will if she remains a few vital seconds more. She grimaces and turns away. And in the time the family start to turn, start to notice the green bobbing into the corner of their eyes, she is already gone.

I'm not hungry anyway, she thinks to herself rather crossly, not realising how strange a thought that is, for a Chimera Ant queen. But then again, she is a rather strange queen in general.

* * *

'Shia-Pouf,' she calls as he arrives back at the abandoned shack where they have made their home, 'please come here. I have questions.'

Her servant bobs into view, her face pitched and gaunt, the way it always is whenever the queen calls out his name in two unnecessarily broken pieces. 'Yes?'

'We have teeth!' The queen gestures wildly, both hands reaching up to yank the corners of her mouth into an elongated grin. Gums exposed, she looks like a clown pulling a funny face.

Pouf twitches. 'Um...yes,' he manages.

The queen lets go of her mouth, wincing slightly as it adjusts back to normality. 'I.. 'she starts, then shakes her head, looking annoyed at herself. 'Ants don't have teeth, do they? They have...knives for mouth. Mani...mandi...mandy...mandyblues.'

'Mandibles,' Pouf corrects gently.

'Yes!' The queen sticks her arm out wildly, a finger pointing firmly at Pouf in obvious glee. In the face of such enthusiasm, Pouf can do nothing but smile. But still...it tugs at him that Meruem would have never done such a thing. That motion, the reactionary nature of it, that was more in line with the actions of...Pouf shakes his head before he can complete the thought.

'We are chimera-ants,' he says grandly, 'at our core, at our very base, we remain insects. But our shape is arranged according to the meals of our ancestors. And human features have been particularly useful for the course of our biology. Especially their brains.'

'Hmm...' the queen pauses, sucking on a finger lightly. Pouf reins back the urge to reach over and wipe away the trail of salvia she leaves hanging against her chin. 'Which queen birthed me? By which I mean...what did she look like? Like you? Did she have a lot of human features?'

The world comes crashing to a halt for Pouf. But he recovers admirably, with barely a trace of distress crossing over from his mind to his face.

'You are a queen, born of a king,' he says tensely. 'So there are no soldier ants to welcome you to this world...just the loyalty of one who could not protect your father.'

'Huh,' the queen blinks. 'A generation removed, huh?'

'Something like that, yes.'

The queen grins. 'Well, thank you for being here, then!'

Pouf blinks. Then he hunkers down slightly, his wings curling round him with a pleased shudder. 'You are very welcome, your Majesty.'

The queen turns, leaving to explore the world in a way Pouf has always wished she wouldn't. And yet, watching her back and the way her tail swishes as the queen lets out a pleased hum in a thoroughly human habit, Pouf doesn't have the heart to reach out and stop her. For deep within the residence of his own, something glows with a steady, surly warmth.

* * *

A few days later, the queen's milk teeth start to fall out in a very undignified way. They hang, they slip and they slide, anchored to her gums with the last remaining shreds of grisly muscles. The queen curses and tears them out, flecks of bloods decorating the floor as she winces and bites back pained yowls. Pouf hovers over her anxiously, offering both a bowl of water and a pair of slender tweezers that shimmer before the queen's eyes with a silver gleam that seems to mock her.

'I donlt nod a dontest,' she spits out, specks of blood accompanying every word.

Rather grandly, Pouf whips out a tissue and wipes the away the red that rings the queen's mouth, ignoring the few drops scattered on his own chin. 'Certainly not,' he says amenably. 'I merely wish to assist however I can.'

The queen frowns. 'I-' then cuts off with a choke.

'Careful,' says Pouf, twisting the queen's chin to the side, with a gentle grip. 'Your adult teeth are coming through. I would advise you not to talk.'

And indeed, within minutes, white barbs sprout thorough the queen's gums. It is close to half an hour before they are fully erect, standing stiff like the walls of a castle.

Pouf smiles to himself. While the casting off of a child's milk teeth is a human process, the fact that they were all thrown off at once, to be replaced within an hour instead of mere months...why it seems to match a shark-like habit, rather than the evolutionary nature of a monkey.

'Oh, gud,' says the queen, before hesitating and finally, finally deciding to take the water Pouf practically thrusts into her hand. She swallows and tries again. 'Good. I can actually talk. How horrifying to be without something similar to a sense!'

'Indeed,' says Pouf drolly.

The queen flinches, wiggling her tongue into the contours of her new teeth. 'Feels strange,' she says after a while. 'I feel bigger, somehow.'

'You have always been big,' says Pouf grandly. 'Why, even a fool can see it!'

The queen gifts him with a smile and Pouf almost faints.

'Oh, that reminds me!'

Pouf watches curiously as the queen dashes off, to the small wardrobe, half-hidden in a corner of the room. 'I found this while digging through the trash!'

'Your Majesty!'

'I know, I know, you don't like it. But humans throw away such odd things!' she turns round, presenting her treasure with a triumphant flourish. But then she frowns. 'What is the matter, Shia-Pouf?' she demands irritably, upon seeing his servant's face turn gaunt and thin. 'You're turning the colour of chalk.'

Pouf straightens up immediately and offers a shaky smile; it is not perfect but it the best he can do on such short notice. 'Ah,' he says, unrolling himself into a bow with a flourish of his hand. 'A thousand pardons, your majesty. I just...it seems strange to allow such frivolous activities to take up your time.'

The queen stares down at the board before him, admiring the way the grooves are chiselled into the wood, as though some divine hand placed them down there. The pattern, the squares...she finds the symmetry of it all pleasing and carefully sweeps a hand across, to remove what little dust there it there. Behind her, Pouf shudders.

'I have never before played a human game that seems so...structured, 'she says. 'And I find myself curious.' She looks up at Pouf slightly, her face settling into a pouf reminiscent of young child. 'Shia-Pouf; play me.'

Pouf turns an interesting shade of green; almost the exact shade, the queen remembers with no small delight, as the time she commanded him to drink sour milk. She almost claps her hands together with delight as her servant sits down in front of him.

'I know the rules,' Pouf says, in such a small, stilted voice that the queen has to frown and lean over slightly to hear him. 'I can teach you, if you wish.'

Still bent over the board, the queen finds herself gazing down for a second , watching the squares and the way they darken under the intermingling of shadows she and Pouf throw across. How does it feel, she wonders, to play against an opponent, where the only deadly strikes are against their spirit?

'Show me,' she says, beckoning with an impatient snap of her fingers. She tries to ignore the way Pouf flinches; so what if it was something she picked up from watching human teenagers play in the streets?

'Very well,' Pouf says after a moment, the clinking of the pieces being the only thing to betray the begrudging movements of his hands. 'I believe the counters are arranged in a manner like so...'

* * *

Author's Note: Oh Pouf. It seems you are doomed to repeat your mistakes.


	8. And shakes

Youpi is fine. Better than, even. He spends his days loping through grasslands and watching stray bouts of shrubbery grow, until eventually he becomes too tired, too weighed down with time and the thought of _living_ through it, that he stops. On the bad days that follow, he lies there, still, as the sun drifts against the earth, painting blistering scars of heat against his skin, more than enough for his bones to boil under thin wreathes of smoke - or so his sun-hazed dreams tell him.

And yet there are good days, days where his eyes roam, captured by the plants that arc off from the cracks they've helped build in an crumbling temple nearby, as they spread their leaves out like waterfalls to drop slender lines of shade across eroding stone. These yellow bricks rise out from beneath, determined, despite the roots mining their surface, and Youpi is struck by the way their colour glares out between the long spillage of plant stems. He compares them to the clouds that habitually break across the brilliant hue of the sky, up above his head, and finds himself stirred by his own imagination.

Once, Youpi would have been surprised at himself. Once, back when he had looked a group of struggling humans in the eye, perhaps, and wondered whether that struggle, that thing that kept their eyes gleaming, was something worthy of respect.

But then the king had almost died. And he had lost a part of himself trying to keep him alive. And though Youpi can not regret the action, some sort of dissatisfaction swirls and unsettles his stomach within. Everything he has ever done, has been for nothing.

The king has disappeared, without as much as much as a whisper, taking Pouf and the little blind woman with him. And neither of them have ever returned. Even Pitou has never come back.

And eventually, with nothing worthwhile at the palace to guard, Youpi has drifted out, onwards, searching for purpose. Only to end up here, patrolling the same old ruins, day in and day out, watching the slow-moving growth of plants he doesn't have any name for. Only once, does he think to himself, that if he were one of the two other royal guards, that things might be different. He might have, for instance, come up with a label for the things his eyes drift to.

Perhaps one day, he will drift somewhere else, end up confronted with more things he lacks the imagination to name. But for now he stays. Sometimes, he even feels as though he enjoys the shapes the plants make, how free and uncluttered they seem, drifting down out of jagged holes, ones that are so different from the craters that tore his old home apart.

If he were Pitou, he might have stalked out among those shadows, easily amused by the drifting twirl of darkness they left spiked against the walls. He may have reached out a clawed hand, slashed against the stone, chasing illusionary objects as they refused to flee his touch.

And if he were Shiaipouf, he would wonder if the colour, that careless spread of yellow above the shadow, was something natural, caused by either sun or age. He might even theorise what the original colour was, whether it had been produced by paint carefully blended together by a mixture of berries, or whether if had been left there, undecorated, its colour mined from the earth and left relatively free and untouched.

But he is not Pouf. He is not Pitou. Those two would have become bored long ago and moved on. So instead he sits. He watches. And ignores his ever dwindling stomach.

* * *

But just as Meruem had no way to brace for Komugi's arrival, for the way her presence illuminated his fate, Youpi now has no way to read the future, to imagine how one moment, or one person, could make all the difference.

* * *

When the grass rustles nearby and something jumps out, with a shriek that almost seems cheerful, he only grunts and turns his head. A butterfly spills by in a flash of colour, smudging dust as fine as chalk against his cheek. It verges off, battered and confused, darting down into some nearby grass stalks. And almost absently, Youpi lifts a finger and nudges it against his cheek. It comes away stained with pink.

And then Youpi looks down, at the thing that was chasing the butterfly, which caused it to collide in such a panicked fashion against his face.

His heart beats. Once. Twice. It does not stop. But something cold plunges down into the blood it pumps through. For Meruem's eyes, though a little wider and with more of a wild wonder in them, are staring back at him.

'Are you...' the girl hesitates. 'Are you like me?'

A flutter of movement catches her eyes and Youpi can't help it, he has to lean forward, just a little, as that purple colour flashes from one side of her face to the other, in order to track it. Her mouths falls open slightly, half in longing as she watches the butterfly shudder and try to crawl.

'Oh,' she says, 'I've managed to hurt it.' It's as though the thought has just occurred to her. But then she offers him a sideways look. 'Well, perhaps that isn't quite true. You were the one in its way after all.' She puffs out her chest and looks almost indignant. 'And, that means you were in my way too!'

She glares at him. But it's so mild, compared to the way Meruem used to do it; it's almost as though she has no real intention of killing him.

Somewhere, deep inside, the ice in his veins begins to thaw. And Youpi can't help it. He grins.

'I'm not like you,' he says slowly. 'I'd feel it, if you were.'

And it's true. Already he can feel the hum in his mind, that pressing need to direct his attention to whatever it is she wants. She is above him, she is the next mother-to-be, she is queen, queen, queen-

And he watches, enthralled, as she screws up her face and whines, almost yells, 'but that doesn't make sense!'

Ah. Perhaps not a queen, _quite_ yet.

He shifts uncomfortably. It's been so long and already the bones in his legs feel feeble, half-melted by the heat of the sun overhead.

'I don't understand,' he says. 'You are a queen – or will be, when you are bigger. And I am a royal guard. I protect...' he trails off and feels her stare settle on him, comfortable in its expectation of an answer. It feels a little too much like Meruem's so he blurts out: 'I am meant to protect!'

Then he flounders, unsure how to explain something she should just _know, _know as deeply as the way blood settles under her skin, as deeply as the way her small bones grind under muscle and flesh. Know in a series of thoughts and lights that bend and break as they stretch from her nerves to her brain. She should just know.

Then he hesitates. Did Meruem always know? Then why did he play games, read books, ask why hadn't received a name? The whole thing makes his head hurt and so Youpi allows it to hang low, to brush the ground in a bow unsuited for his size. He is smaller than he once was, though still large enough to cast a shadow over her.

'I live to serve,' he mutters, feeling gratitude trickle in, 'command me. Give me orders.'

So that I may live, comes the unspoken, but pressing thought that slides into his mind. He shudders at its intrusion, at the sudden rise of selfishness that keeps his brow pressed to the ground and hopes the queen doesn't notice.

'I...' The queen, for her part, shuffles, her toes kneading the dirt like an uncomfortable cat. 'I-I've never had more than one servant before.' She stares down at him, a worried frown crossing over her face as her fingers tug against each other. 'I...stand up! I-I command you to stand up.'

He struggles to rise instantly, feeling weakness leech into his limbs as he remembers unwillingly, how long it has been since he last ate. Days, perhaps? Many...many days? He totters under the sun and is unsurprised to see the certainly leech out from the queen's face. She peers up at him, her gaze frank and annoyed.

'You're so thin!' she exclaims. 'I had hoped because you were so tall, that you could give me a piggyback the way I've seen human men do with...' she trails off, face flushing and despite himself, Youpi feels his eyes widen. Meruem...Meruem never did _this_.

The queen taps her foot impatiently, her frown wavering. 'I...I'm sorry, but you have dirt on your face. Right...here,' she says, mouth twitching at the end of her sentence as though she wants to laugh. She raises her finger, pointing it at her own forehead, before swiping it across in parody of a cut-throat gesture.

Bemused, Youpi raises a trembling hand and strikes his thumb swiftly across his forehead. A chunk of his skin immediately falls away.

The queen shrieks. But it is nowhere near as cheerful as the first time Youpi heard her voice, back when it was loud and unashamed, wrapped round in childish glee. Now it sounds horrified. And painfully human.

'You're bleeding! Oh...oh no.' She looks round in a panic. 'I...I...we heal quicker than humans, I know, I know...but still...'

She looks up at him, biting her lip and Youpi is not sure what to do with the worry he sees in the gesture. Nor does he know what to make of the way her hands bunch together, palms slipping and sliding as fingers lose hold of each other before coming up, fast and furious to hit against skin again. He feels the worry though, feels it fester in the atmosphere like a living thing, so he kneels down again and reaches out with his big, wide hands, to capture her smaller ones. They freeze instantly and for a moment, Youpi wonders if he has done something wrong.

But instead she stares at them, her eyes running over his knuckles with wonder. She looks at the tough curl of his thumb, then at the limber, sweat-slicked swirl of one of her own, as it rests tautly against the finger of her opposing hand.

'Your hands are like planets compared to my own,' she says wistfully. 'They're what I imagine my father's would look like.'

Youpi feels his world open up as she says these words. Feels it open up into a long, dark hole.

'And Pouf's are so slender,' she continues, unaware of the effect she is having on him. 'So graceful and sleek. Like an artist's, I guess. And mine...so, s-stubby and child-like. I wanted to learn how to do something beautiful with them for once and I have! But now Pouf is...'she hesitates.

And then lets out a gasp as Youpi rises, dragging her off her feet. She hangs from his hands, dangling like meat off a butcher's hook and for a moment, she feels fear. But then Youpi grunts, and tosses her up, up, into the air, so she can see above the line of the temple, into the crumbling square of the courtyard below before she falls and the hidden sprigs of ivy tumble away from her eyes. She lands on something firm and broad, muscles bunching up under her palms like coiled snakes. She digs her nails in slightly, in retaliation, wishing they were claws, then regrets it as Youpi turns his head to peer over at her from above the round hump of his shoulder.

'What?' he asks. 'I thought you wanted this piggyback?'

She pauses. Then leans forward, wrapping her arms firmly around his neck, like a scarf. She takes a moment just to breathe.

'Yes,' she says firmly and can't help but let the excitement cloud her tone. 'I do.'

* * *

Youpi almost collapses six times on the way back. The queen doesn't seem to mind. In fact she giggles and screeches, caught up in the idea that this is part of a performance, some grand ride with the allure of danger that can be controlled, reined in before it becomes too real.

And Youpi is once again learning the lure of determination, of the thrill of reliance somebody else has of him not falling, not _failing_. Impossibly it keeps his feet rooted, keeps him heaving one foot in front of the other, keeps him walking toward the direction the queen's finger points out to him as it prods against the horizon from beyond his face. It is a welcome feeling.

Youpi doesn't wonder at the plants he crushes beneath his plodding walk, or at the idea of what tomorrow will bring; he has no time for wonder. Only for the little life clinging to his back, giggling at the sudden sway of his shoulders. And at the growing anger he has for Pouf. It clings to him, sears his vision red, in the seconds he allows it to. But then the queen's giggle brings him back and he smiles, delighting in her chuckles as he tramples onward, towards what might, if he lets it, become home.

For behind the sound she is there, still breathing. And she directs him behind walls, along the lines of tree-edged gardens, into the quickly opened-up patches of sunlight that bears down on them both; cloistered walkways that exist in the frail, but spacious, moments between rush hour and the lethargic crawl that possesses the few pedestrians free of this humdrum routine. Eventually, with what cover they scourge, up to hide their way, they arrive at the house, and she laughs when Youpi has to bend his head to fit through the door.

'Your majesty, where have you be-'

Pouf spins into view as he rushes into the room, his tongue, along with the rest of him, freezing once he sees Youpi. For this was beyond his calculations, beyond his plans. And it throws his envisioned future into chaos.

'Youpi,' he says, but the name comes out faintly, half-swallowed by fear. Pouf spares a moment to wonder if his face has turned ashen as a result, but dismisses it quickly. There are more pressing concerns. Like the fact that his charge is currently resting between those massive shoulder blades.

And she looks helplessly small like that, like a kitten caught in the gnarled twist of a branch, her claws barely jutting into the surface. The uncertainty is present in her face as she peeks out from behind the bulge of muscle that makes up Youpi's neck, far more slender than Pouf remembers and stretched thin by what looks to be starvation. But it still holds his head up proudly all the same.

'You two know each other?' her voice sneaks out, quivering in light of the tension she feels wrapped around them. She can feel it in the way the muscles beneath her fingers harden, in the way her eyes glance down to see Youpi's fists curl and tighten. He feels rigid beneath her, like a husk, instead of the possible playmate she wishes him to be.

'Your majesty,' says Pouf smoothly (for what's the point in hiding that simple fact now?) 'I believe I told you to take a break from the human games which seem to be eating up your time lately. Not to bring back another mouth to feed.'

She scowls, feeling a little giddy at the thought that for once, she is taller than Shia-pouf. It makes it stupidly easy for her to throw out her next words.

'I like Youpi! Don't talk about him like he's some sort of pet! I'll...I'll help find food for him so you won't have to!'

Pouf feels his eyebrows raise. 'A queen should not have to feed herself, much less others.'

'Yeah,' says Youpi and he says it almost gently, quietly enough at least, so that they have to shush in order to hear him speak. 'Yeah, looking out for others isn't something you do anymore. Right, Pouf?'

Pouf's mouth becomes a grim line and his wings flare as he stalks forwards, more than aware of Youpi's towering form.

'I obeyed the king's orders! That has, and always should, come first! We left because he ordered it, Youpi! And now all that is left, is his daughter.'

Youpi purses his lips. 'So it's true then. You let the king die.'

'What!' squeaks out the queen. She raises her hands up in a placating gesture, despite the fact nobody can see it. 'No! No, no, no! Shia-pouf didn't let anyone die! You don't let anybody die! You either kill them or you save them, that's all there is to it!'

'No,' says Youpi slowly. 'I once thought like that. Not anymore.'

Then, with a swiftness she has never seen in him, he plucks her from his shoulder as carefully as you would a flower and sets her behind him. She feels her bones crumple as he charges forward, head lowered like a bull but eyes sharp beneath his brow, filled with an intelligence that no herbivore has ever possessed.

But Pouf ducks and swirls, his wings emerging into a vivid shield of colour, the dust shivering off with a vibrating thrum as he jumps back, only half in flight. Youpi roars, the dust falling into his eyes and ears and now his throat as he turns and bucks, one muscular arm shooting out to seize Pouf by the ankle and dash him against the ground.

He is full of it, all this rage, this potential, to do something. And the end result doesn't matter; He can sacrifice his consciousness if he can bring Pouf down with him. He's had months to think after all, months of silence and reflection. Perhaps he hadn't interfered enough in Meruem's life or perhaps it had let too much pass without trying to understand it; he will never know now. But what he does understand in a sudden striking bout of clarity, is that this child shouldn't be with Pouf.

The way he had looked at her as she arrived with Youpi in tow...it was almost as though he thought he could change her, just with a disapproving stare.

But Youpi doesn't believe in change. Or at least, not in one that can make things better somehow. Living for months with the silence, with only the temple for company has convinced him of that much.

His grip tightens round Pouf's ankle, tightens until he is confident he can squeeze the bone into ribbons of marrow, push it into a splintered husk. Push all his anger into it and ruin Pouf's leg entirely. But before the crack can come, he blinks and lets go. Then grunts and sways. Too late, his hand wanders towards his mouth.

'It would have worked,' says Pouf loftily, 'had you been faster. But it appears that you've let yourself go to waste.'

Yes, Youpi can feel it. The weakness he's allowed to seep into himself, all those wasted muscles screaming for the energy he's failed to give them these past weeks. He's never tried to fight in such a condition before. Pouf is right. He's too slow. And adrenalin can only take him so far.

'No, no!' The queen darts out from behind Youpi's bulk, running up to tug at Pouf's sleeve. 'Don't kill him! He's not food!'

No, Youpi wants to say, don't go to him. He's clever, very clever, but he doesn't see enough of you. Of course, he's not sure he could either, but...ah...what was he worried about again?

Still he can see the careful stillness in Pouf's face, and it clashes, no matches, with the way he looks when he's reading or thinking about killing someone.

''Please!' The queen voice is choked now, her voice dashed by the hiccups brought on with her frustrated tears. 'I – hic!- I'll hate you- hic!- forever!'

'If I let him live, then I beg you, your majesty, I beg you to lessen your time with other...unsavoury pursuits.'

She blinks, understanding dawning on her face.' You want me to stop playing gungi...'

Pouf must be invested. It's the only way to explain why his eyes have been drawn away from Youpi's slumped over form.

Youpi's takes in a rattling breath. Just one, he thinks, just to make enough time for my fist. And up he comes, both him and his hand, fingers uncurling into a wide, spread motion, like an open net. And the dust flies out, the light wavering through the multitude of particles to create a rainbow that shimmers, like a stream. In one fierce gust of motion, it shoots directly into Pouf' s face.

The other guard instantly sputters, stepping back to glare, somewhat wearily into Youpi's face before he sways slightly. And Youpi does his best to grin in return, to let the smug sense of satisfaction well up and show in his face, all before the darkness takes him. And as he falls, his hands slide up to display palms of hardened, sun-bruised skin, the kind that doesn't easily let dust, dirt and other things sink in and stick.

Perhaps some change, at least in small, almost unnoticed doses, can be good, after all.

* * *

Youpi doesn't die. But he does sleep. He drifts into dreams that verge onto the edge of awareness, where he feels his mouth being pried open with small fingers, almost human in their scope. He resists the urge to bite down as he feels water trickle down over their slight weight, the tiny nails pressing into his palate like the edge of a baby spoon. Other times mashed mixtures are shoved down; he's not sure, since he's only ever eaten meat, but the taste feels like the sun so he guesses it's plant food, stuff that was once trapped on stems or at least warmed by the outside air.

Eventually he awakens, enough to let the colours come swirling in, and he blinks up into the face of the queen. Her purple eyes blink at him in return before joy overtakes her and she beams in a wide, deliberate smile.

'Oh good, you're awake!'

She hums happily before lifting a small white towel from the basin of water she holds at her side. Uncomfortable, Youpi shifts and realises that his head is leaning on the small curves of her thighs. But her smile, so light and airy in the moments before, instantly dissolves into a frown at this movement. She raps at the side of his head with a scowl.

'No moving!'

Then, with just enough cheer to verge onto the edge of sadism, she throws the wetted flannel over his forehead.

Mindful of her order, Youpi tenses and tries not to squirm. The towel feels like ice against his skin and the sudden plunge in temperature weighs on him like a stone. Pouf, he thinks, would have definitely screeched. Definitely. Or so he tells himself.

'Shia-pouf did this for me once when I was too hot to move. And also, I think, when he's being mean and thinks I'm sleeping too much. Once, he did it during the middle of a game when I was busy thinking up my next move! Don't you think that's too much?'

The queen chatters happily, her words matching the quick stutter and start of a hopping game, rather than simply flowing and becoming more of a background melody than a hum. But Youpi lets the rhythm, this clash of sound, wash over him all the same and feels something tug at his mind. It is not happiness but it is perhaps, a near enough cousin.

'You have to get stronger,' the queen informs him firmly, using her knee as leverage to prop up his head a little more firmly. 'I won't let Shia-pouf hurt you but I can't be here forever and he's still weak at the moment, not strong enough to protest or make me make promises I don't want to keep.'

Youpi rolls his shoulder slightly and feels the strain that clams down on his muscles. He is so...hobbled now. Almost useless. Almost.

'Let me talk to him,' he says.

Pouf, his wings wrapped around him like protective webbing, stares at Youpi. Youpi stares back. Eventually, when he decides to speak, there is no fear clouding his tongue. But yet, strangely enough, he can sill feel anxiety resting at the root of it.

'She is not the king.'

Pouf tenses. 'I know that.'

'Good.' Youpi takes a breath and fights the inclination to roll his shoulder again. 'She will be sad if we die. Meruem...no, our king, wouldn't, I don't think.'

Pouf is silent for a while. Then he bows his head in reply.

'Help me stop her,' he whispers and Youpi strains forward, sees Pouf's elegant hands bruise into a striking white as they bunch against his knees. 'Help me stop her playing gungi.'

And Youpi feels very, very gentle when he next speaks. It is a strange feeling. 'She is not the king. But her orders are important. They make her happy.' He tilts his head to the side, wincing as his neck allows a creak to slip out. 'I will not make her unhappy.'

But you can. Pouf can almost feel the unspoken sentiment fly out to hit him in the face and his teeth clench. But he does not make any attempt to argue the point further.

'Did she ask for a name' The question comes out bluntly and while Youpi is above wincing at the harshness of his tone, he is not hard enough to prevent himself from averting his eyes. He does not need them to know that Pouf's face has become tenser, his jaws grinding together like pincers instead of teeth.

'No. She has no need for one.'

Youpi grunts. He has no real opinion either way. Though...

'Did the king give her one? It's something he might have cared about.'

Pouf raps a finger irritably against his knee. And Youpi chances a glance at him, just enough to see that Pouf's hands have unclenched, the material in his trousers still creased, but no longer tightened and plucked into mountain-like wads.

'She has no need for one,' Pouf finally repeats and Youpi feels like letting out a breath at this admission of selfishness. 'And more importantly, she has never asked for a name.' And then his eyes swivel round to focus on Youpi's own. 'And I hope,' he says a lot more softly and there, altogether a lot more _dangerously_, 'that she never picks up the need to desire one. As you said: she is not _Meruem_.'

Youpi nods slowly. And decides to leave it at that.


	9. continues to break

It is Morel who walks through the house, who wipes his fingers through dust and lowers his head when he steps through the door. It is he who walks, careful as a cat, over scattered gungi pieces and a shrivelled corpse, bones poking through like bicycle spokes. And it is his lip that curls in disgust as he bends, one huge hand covering the entirety of her skull.

Unbidden, his pipe rides up from his shoulders like a dark thing brushing free of the ocean waves, before it jostles the ceiling with a bump. The motion is only halfway intentional and smoke immediately floods out of the end, drifting down to collapse into two light-grey forms that kneel beside Morel's large legs. Without a word they gather her up between them and carry her through to the outside world. Morel himself, has no time for grave-burying.

Instead he notes the lack of clutter, the piles of uneaten food, complete with useless wheat and flour, both grown bad with the dark green liquid that spills over the bags they nestle within. And then his eye catches a book, its pages riding up over the bump of a pen wedged in between like a makeshift bookmark. Morel's brow furrows as he opens it up to read names and the careful ramble of thoughts that spill out in its wake.

_'Green is a natural colour, one reflected in leaves and plants the world over. It is a hue that the world has chosen to paint itself with, something that life has chosen to weave itself inside. But I have done things in my time as king, things that some might argue would render me unworthy of it. So is it perhaps relief that touches me now? Now, whenever I look at her, and see that her skin will never be the same shade as my own. Though it is still green enough, if I may borrow Komugi's words, for me to see myself reflected there._

_Is it still borrowing from Komugi too, now that I agree with the name she has chosen for our child? I am almost loathe to write it down, for if someone should read this...if you should read this, you will not understand the context behind the word. Even if you play gungi._

_We named our child after a technique Komugi once had to leave behind, in order to grow. I suppose that in turn, is very much like life itself. And that is what I want for my child. A life._

_But what shall she leave behind as she does? I already know what I am leaving. And I am leaving soon._

_I was named for the light, for something that even now, I feel as though I have barely began to grasp. Komugi was named for the wheat that grows in fields, for her family's livelihood. And my daughter was named for our history. Because it was not only Komugi who grew when she had to snuff out her own creation. It was I as well, years later, when I re-crafted (Komugi would say re-birthed, I suppose) the very same move, Kokoriko, though at the time I knew it by another name._

_I do not know your name, you who are reading this ramble of unsightly thoughts. But perhaps you will care to know mine. It is Meruem. And if they are still here, if Komugi and Kokoriko still live, perhaps you will be kind enough to ensure they stay that way.'_

It is hard to think of the former Chimera ant king as rueful. But that is the emotion that infuses these words and Morel can imagine a harsh tone, forced into something steady and perhaps sounding a little lost, with a tinge of something close to regret. Either way...

Morel closes the book firmly and stares at the corner, at the shrunken head of someone who once, was practically un-killable. He almost, almost casts another puppet free from his pipe. But then he catches himself, something in his motion stuttering to a stop as his fingers uncurl from the pages, one of them giving a last, tentative brush over words that he is only the second person to have ever seen. And he finds himself glad suddenly, that he is the hunter that he is. He can think of many in the organisation who would not have given this book another thought, some who might have crumbled it between their fists and then torn it apart. In times like this, he is glad to be gentle.

The very opposite, in fact, of Hisoka. For Morel can see a traces of the man here, an obvious signal that declares himself the victor in the game of tracking down the one creature that faced Netero and lived to walk away. And it is left there, around the head, in a spillage of playing cards that brush around the contours of the skin, as though in parody of a summoning circle. Each one holds the image of a king within, his robes tucked in not only by the framed borders, but by the red love hearts that contrast each other in opposing corners. It makes Morel sick.

But still, he heaves himself to his feet, barely a shudder in his steps as he walks over to Meruem's head. He barely takes in it's wrinkled browness or the way it sits, a solid weight on the floor that does not stir, even when his feet cause dust to lift and gather close. He could compare it to rotten fruit, could see it as nothing more than a putrid smear of something that could have been a majestic god, one to usher in a new era fraught with human fear; but that would be too poetic. He simply lowers himself as though in prayer, carefully scooping up the small, whittled thing as though his palms are dipping for water, steady, as though frightened to let even a drop escape. To his skin it feels strange, like a half-broken turtle shell that sags, almost willing to break and burst. There are not even any clumps of hair for his fingers to fasten onto and this alien absence is enough to make him to frown. For Morel has grasped hold of disembodied heads before. But never one like this.

He tuts.

'He didn't even bother to shut your eyes.'

It doesn't matter though. Morel will shut them for him. Right after he finishes digging a second grave, this time, with his own two hands.

* * *

Something short this time, like an interlude. I thought about about putting more in, but there was an abrupt scene change and it felt incrediably jarring to read after Morel was being...kinda reflective?

Also, regarding the queen's name. Originally, it was gonna be completely something different, to do with the colour green, like 'Midori' or 'Verte'. But as I thought it over (and I've had MONTHS, it's ridiculous) I felt uncomfortable with the way it seemed to cut out Komugi's outlook of the world. And well, 'Kokoriko', as Meruem puts it, reflects something incrediably important to both of them. It's also not very original, but whelp, what is these days?


	10. Wide open

The effect of Youpi's coming is worse than Pouf feared. For, without a promise to bind her, the queen turns back to gungi with a ravenousness that surprises him. He watches, fearfully, as she becomes locked into herself with a gaze that has time only for the board and the books that might better help her understand it. For something has been aroused, awakened, and she devours the game theory inside, before spitting out strategies at an aggressive pace. Pouf frantically tries to stay one step ahead of her, suspiciously tearing through the pages she hasn't read yet, as his eyes rake through the words for that one, vital name the queen must never, _never _find.

To his surprise the human female is not mentioned as widely as she merits. Her moves, those ones she devised seemingly on the spot (or at least, the ones she had before she met Meruem) are mentioned of course, though Pouf notices her 'remote concealment' has vanished from the newer editions. But there are no pictures of her and when she is mentioned, it is usually by her title, followed by the dates depicting the length of time she managed to hold onto her crown. It briefly occurs to Pouf to wonder who the current champion is, but he dismisses the thought a moment later; he is too worried for his queen.

And worried too, about Youpi. The guard watches him now, eyes narrow with a gleam of calculation that Pouf had never dreamed he would see. But he tries not to let it bother him; Youpi never interferes with his reading after all, and he doesn't seem to care when Pouf strips the books of their incriminating pages. In fact, his eyes turn disinterested when the other ant's fingers become frantic, pulling in a way that is both swift and clean as though he were to rob the books' spines with a knife instead of his hands.

Most of the time though, Youpi trails after the queen like a puppy, watching her plot out moves with a calm sort of patience Pouf struggles to stop and understand. He wonders, fleetingly, what Youpi learned in the months he was alone and what could possibly have tamed him enough to make him sit and listen to the clank of the tiles. He does not stop to consider, not for one second, about how the grief of the king's departure, let alone his own, could have helped shape his old comrade.

It is, however, completely unsurprising that Youpi cannot play gungi. At least not well. He picks up bit and pieces, and when the queen drifts into a certain mood, she lets Youpi play against her, depriving herself of certain pieces at the start in the hope of making the game last a little longer than the ten minutes it inevitably does. Sometimes, she even lets Youpi invent his own rules, lets him pick off her own pieces with diagonal, and according to the game's rules, illegal swipes of his fingers, before allowing him to build barriers with his own pieces in shape of a fort. It makes Pouf wonder which of them is really the younger, for she seems much older in these moments, and kinder too, the soft look on her face awakening a dark and violent fear within him. For he remembers the day he once saw something similar in Meruem's face, the day the king stood in the doorway of a ramshackle hut and blocked his way to Komugi. He had been hard then, yes, but the softness in his eyes when he looked at Pouf had stirred something within, had made him feel small and mean.

He still feels that way sometimes when he follows the queen and Youpi with his eyes, when he watches them drag in piles of rubbish and sort through bundles of clothes, clothes she then heaves over her head with the coltish grace of the very young. Remembers the way his heart fell to his shoes once, becoming a small, buried stone in his heel when he saw Youpi clumsily adjusting the way a scarf rippled over her throat with his thick fingers. The queen had laughed as Youpi's giant thumb brushed against the knob of her throat, the one that blew her windpipe into stark relief, and Pouf, in response, had felt something inside him clench and then shrivel.

And to his horror, it is only the beginning of a much longer game. For not long after that, she sweeps into gungi societies under the cover of these over-sized jackets and long shawls she digs out from the trash, sometimes even sporting hats from which a spew of feathers erupts from under the rim. The humans, of course, are so stupid that they shrug it off as a mere fashion statement, or else as some weirdo who like to superglue a bunch of bird tails to her clothes. But they accept her, even if some sneer at the 'goth paint' she has apparently smoothed over her skin.

Pouf is indignant. 'You should strike them down where they stand!'

'No.' The queen smiles indulgently. 'It is...funny.'

Youpi hums and then sniggers as though he agrees; he often accompanies her excursions to these societies, the muscular set of him wrapped up firmly within the folds of a trench coat. He also, much to Pouf's disgust has taken to wearing a large bower hat that covers the pointed tips of his ears with its curled rim, and is, in his opinion, like a badly dressed extra from a spy movie.

'It _is_ funny,' Youpi mutters a little sullenly, though there's an excited tremor to his tongue. 'You would know that if you actually bothered to join us for once.'

'Besides,' the queen adds. 'The people there make for better challenges than either of you two.' She grins. 'Maybe one day, I will be strong enough to challenge the champion.'

Pouf tries to swallow down his trepidation at the thought.

* * *

But the day arrives; Pouf should not have doubted it. The fact that he did...well, it speaks to how unworthy he truly is. He watches his queen from the shadows of the crowd, the zetsu of his nen disguising him as beautifully as any tapestry woven against the wall would. And Youpi...Youpi is knelt on the floor a few scant metres away, his shoulders bunched up beneath the lapels of the trench coat irritably. Pouf spares a thought as to how overheated his fellow guard must be and allows himself a private smile.

He is not the only one. Smiling, that is. The queen is positively beaming. She even giggles. Then she walks over to take her place on one side of the board, slumping onto her knees in front of a woman who is dressed almost as heavily as she is. Pouf takes in this new shape, watching the way it slides through a stack of arm warmers and scarves, before wondering why it tugs at him so.

'Let us begin,' says this woman and Pouf notices how steady her voice is.

They play. And it is like...it is like Komugi has been reborn. Or perhaps not quite. The queen plays beautifully, like she is sitting at a finely tuned piano, her moves methodical until she is surprised - and then it is like her fingers race forward with a spring of inspiration. Her style is far more unruly in these moments, nothing like the elegant tap of Komugi's fingers, despite their sudden decisiveness.

The woman struggles to keep up. To Pouf's eyes, it is as though she is a shadow, someone who bends and allows the other player to race through the gaps in her defence, before turning and springing forth a trap. She bites her lip, grunting with the effort of thinking. Gungi is not smooth to her; it does not flow through her mind as though she were born for it. And she plays as though the board were nothing more than tracing paper, her fingers following a designated line that only she can see.

It is only after the queen has won, that this woman straightens with a strange smile. 'You play as beautifully as your mother,' she says and then it is the queen's turn to straighten up, her tail twitching in astonishment.

And it is these words that set Pouf free, that throw the ant within him into a visceral rage. He flies forward, feeling as though he has left his heart thumping back below the shadows, under the sway of people as they clamber and press in on him like...like smoke. With a cry of rage, Pouf is wrestled to the ground, the smoke puppets pressing him down to cover his wings in a smothering grey. Within seconds he is tearing his apprehenders off, albeit weakly, and to his left, he hears Youpi bellow, watching the windmill swing of his arms, before they are clouded over with a swirl of tobacco smoke. But despite everything, he glares through this mist, glares as though his eyes could cut through to her, Fern Russia, the defeated champion.

There is a sizzling crack and a blue shot of lightning strikes his shoulder. He rolls, feeling half on fire, his heart wrenching at the startled cry his queen gives out, a cry for him.

''Shia-pouf!

A boot lands in his face, the force hitting him away from whatever reassurance he could hope to utter back.

'I told you before,' their white-haired owner mutters as Pouf's world begins to turn dark, 'I really hate people like you.'

He turns to see Fern Russia, now free of her scarves, helping that boy – _Gon - _pin the queen to the ground. She's such a small thing, smaller than Meruem, though still larger than Komugi. And she fights like an animal. If it had been the former champion alone, she would have fallen. But Gon is here and that's all Pouf can really register before the darkness hauls away his mind completely.

If Pouf had still been awake, he would be in despair. The boy he once hoped would kill Komugi, is now throwing his last hope to the ground, thrusting it in along with his elbow with a force that is not quite lethal. And all the while he wears a strange, thoughtful expression. In truth, he appears a little less like a monster because of it.

* * *

When Pouf wakes up, it is in a cold craven, stone binding his wrists to the floor. He looks at it with disinterest, noting the way it crawls up over his skin like webbing, like it had once sloshed against his flesh like a liquid. Under the gloom it appears blue, as though they have been dragged down, miles underwater.

'Such terrible eyes.'

He looks up to see Fern Russia staring at him. There's something dark in her eyes, something that flashes away like a scared rabbit and makes her fists clench slightly. He recognises it as hostility.

'You look as though you wish to die.'

He has no interest it talking to her, he really doesn't. But still, almost despite himself, his voice emerges from his throat in a gravelly tone that warps, almost becoming a keening note of sorrow.

'I failed my first king. And the one thing he left behind, that one vital part of him that still _lives..._I failed that as well. Of course I wish to die.'

Fern Russia tilts her head to the side. 'Your second master is not dead yet. There is no reason to throw your life away so quickly.' She smiles to herself as though she is hearing a particularly twisted joke, even though she can see joy erupting upon his face. 'And I don't say that lightly.'

'No, I imagine, you wouldn't.' Pouf leans back as far as he is able with a smirk. 'I remember you; the woman who defied her species. Palm Siberia.' He lets her name leave his mouth in a rush, as though it is something unpleasant he wishes to spit out.

Palm smiles sedately and calmly lifts her head. Her gaze is haughty, as though she is one of the king's guard and not a lowly foot soldier.

'Before you twisted me, I was part of another species, fully human,' she says. 'I could not forget that despite your best efforts; not while there was still another human who cared enough to try and remind me of it.' Her eyes go distant. 'You spoke of your current queen, as though she were a part of Mereum. But from my, admittedly limited observation, she seems quite different. An individual in her own right.'

Pouf lets out a breath. For one, startling moment he had been sure that she would say the queen, _impossible_ though it was, took after her mother.

'She is,' admits Pouf, though it grates at him to admit it. 'I tried' – he cuts off and swallows, trying to ignore the interest that glows in her eyes. 'I tried to run from it, at first. But now, I no longer know if it is a bad thing that she is not...that she is not _Meruem_. Or if it is good.'

'You're better off, like that,' Palm tells him gently. 'If you knew for sure, you'ld love her in a very different way. It may not be as pure or as...as forced as the way you loved Meruem. But this way, I think, is better.'

Pouf stares at her. He cannot think of a single thing to say in response.

Palm sighs, her eyes never quite leaving her face. 'Honestly I did not want to talk to you.,' she admits. 'If I had my way, we would have killed you on the spot. Killua was another vocal advocate in that department, as well.' She smiles softly to herself. 'But...Gon insisted. He said he didn't want a repeat of last time.' Her eyes drift away from him. 'It's a pity; I would have liked to talk to your new queen. I learnt to play gungi because of her mother, after all. My self-inflected penalty for breaking my promise, when I could not keep her safe.'

Pouf is not human - he scorns the very thought of it. So he does not swallow as Palm's eyes find him once again. And the slight jump in his stomach? That twisting grind of nerves that pull at him, that yank the queen's face into view, making it taunt and wide-eyed with disgusted surprise? No, it is nothing.

Dimly he remembers the queen scouting out town windows, peering through to view families, something similar to longing clouding her face. And the twist in his stomach tightens, pulls harder.

'Ah,' says Palm gently, so gently that her whisper sounds sinister. 'I really do regret it, you know. Not being able to keep her alive, in much the same way you probably regret not being able to save your former king. It must gall you, to know that a lowly human, a hunter, was the one that claimed his head.'

Pouf looks up.

Palm's lips twitch. She is being too vindictive, she knows. But this is the guard who played with Gon's life, who held it up against Komugi's as though one should have out-weighed the other; almost as if he expected them to act the same way he would have. So she feels more than a little justified when she leans down and brushes her voice against his ear.

'Hisoka,' she breathes, 'that was his name. He even left behind his signature, so we would all know it was him. Didn't you see it? Or were your eyes already so focused on your new queen, that you were blind to everything else?'

But Pouf is already incapable of listening. The blood rushes through and his brain flares into life at the sound of the name she gives him. _Hisoka...Hisoka, Hisoka, Hisoka_...the chant rises in his mind and gives fuel to the rage that begins to burn, shimmering into a heated fusion of grief and violent, antagonistic instinct.

'WHERE!?' demands Pouf, his jaws snapping together with a clink that does not sound entirely mammal-like in nature.

Palm notes the slight black that emerges from his mouth, only a little sharper than a stick. It wiggles in fury and she remembers Knuckle recounting how Shaiapouf's face had once shorn in two, one half openly displaying the insect within.

'WHERE? WHERE, WHERE, WHERE, WHERE!' Pouf charges forward, the sinew in his muscle beginning to tear. He ignores the rock that clamps down upon his wrists, yanking frantically so that the blood vessels within drift and tear from their intended paths. 'WHERE IS HE?'


	11. So the wonder swallows us whole

What sort of thoughts whirl through Gon's mind? It has always been a little bit of a mystery, even to the people who know him best. Killua, who considers himself to be one of these, snorts and scuffs his shoe against the nearest shadow, one that slides over into a slope and allows his movement to hide. Within the dark, he can feel the space his foot refuses to touch, that flawless curve of rock that arcs out away from his temper to exist as an invisible seam between the cave-wall and cave-floor. Feeling a little angrier, he relaxes his ankle, letting his foot stretch out a few vital centimetres, just enough to graze solid rock. It barely makes a sound.

But Gon still turns to face him with all the quickness of a nervous animal. And he frowns, just enough to radiate obvious disapproval.

'Don't do that. We promised that nice historian that we wouldn't do anything to damage this place. It's pretty old, remember?'

And so is my trust in you, thinks Killua, even though sometimes it might be best, if it wavers, just a bit.

As if Gon picks up on this, he smiles. And it makes Killua bristle at the sheer unfairness that Gon, for all his mystery, has a better grasp of Killua than Killua will ever have of him.

'It's fine Killua. I'm not angry at this girl. Well...' Gon's eyes slide away for a moment, appearing dark and unfathomable. 'She's eaten a lot of people. I'm mad about that. But I don't think she had anyone tell her not to, or even to give her an ultimatum, like we would.' He frowns and the tiny shift in his expression is enough to bring his thoughts racing back into his eyes.

Killua can't help but feel apprehensive, watching the way they gleam as the alien trace of these thoughts play out under the strain of light that flickers and shifts like a shroud around them. For a moment this almost dies, the shadows racing in to engulf them, until Killua's concentration reasserts itself and he produces more light from his fingers in a mere snap and crackle of electric blue.

Gon swallows. 'Besides...'

'You have to apologise to someone else, right?'

Gon shoots him a harried look and Killua enjoys it, this thrill that he can still jolt Gon into surprise.

But then Gon smiles. And like always, it gives Killua the power of half-baked belief, if not a strange urge to try and shove the sun back into the sky, even when the darkness hesitatingly crawls around them both like this.

'Yeah. You're right. I do.'

Both of them turn into the awaiting darkness, into the tunnel, where further on, if they concentrate, they can hear skin scraping against stone.

The queen awaits.

* * *

Youpi wakes up. His head hurts.

'Ow,' he says. Or perhaps grunts. He's not quite sure. And honestly he doesn't care.

Within seconds the world is swirling back into colour, a dull, dingy one and he bucks up, feeling his muscles grind and strain against more of this irritating, cloudy grey.

'Yo,' says a voice and Youpi's head whips round, fast enough to hurt – he feels, more that hears the bones in his neck giving out a squeak of protest. For a minute he cannot believe what he is seeing.

Morel lifts his palm and waves. Then his mouth opens and out pops a series of smoky rings, small shapes that drift into a largeness that wavers and shakes apart like the trailing smoke of a chimney. Youpi watches them limp across the air in front of him, his eyes wide and disbelieving.

'She's safe,' Morel finally says. 'Though I suppose that means little, given the circumstances.'

A nearby smoke puppet leans forwards and mimes knocking against the rock coils that bind Youpi, as though it were nothing more than a slide of wood. It reinforces the point, however.

'A buddy of mine crafted that for us,' says Morel mildly. 'Though not a good enough buddy to consider doing such work for free. I'll have to make him buy me a drink the next time I see him.'

Youpi starts to feel something churn within his gut. It takes him longer than it should to recognise the feeling as rage. But for once, he clamps down on it,, hard. He seizes it, a struggling, flighty  
things and pushes it up to the forefront of his mind, allowing it to shape his perceptions, to let it dull the pain he feels in his stiff limbs. He is not the same ant who forced down Morel and his men before. He is not as strong, for one thing.

Also, now he has patience on his side. He wonders how much Morel has.

'I do not think you're lying,' says Youpi, thinking things through furiously. 'Otherwise I would never have woken up at all. But I do have the...' He hesitates, wondering which words would the best to use. 'I cannot tell if you are telling the truth about everything,' he settles on firmly.

Morrel raises an eyebrow from behind his dark glasses in a curious flick of black that does not show as much surprise as Youpi senses he feels.

'That's the nature of an interrogation,' says Morrel. 'The person asking the questions controls what information to give the victim as a form of incentive. I can already guess what might cause you to give whatever secrets you're keeping to me; I just have to hone that down into something manageable without putting my team into something of a disadvantage.'

'Does that mean you'll give me proof that she's alive?' asks Youpi bluntly.

For the first time, Morel looks genuinely troubled. It's all in the twist of his mouth as he lifts his pipe up, just high enough to poke through his lips and let a coil of smoke drift free. The queen, Youpi knows, makes similar distortions with her own mouth, curling and bending the line of her lips all too easily into sulks and the low onset simmer of a childish temper.

'Hmmm,' says Morel. 'I'm going to be honest with you about something. The truth is, I'm not entirely comfortable with this. At the end of our battle with you, all those months ago, when you chose to spare our lives, you showed something distinctly human. I'm weak against such gestures.' He lifts the pipe away from his mouth completely and grins uneasily. 'You and me, as interrogator and would-be informant. It's a bad match-up.'

'I don't care,' says Youpi bluntly. 'You humans blew up my king while I was busy feeling sorry for you. I won't make that mistake again.'

'A mistake, huh?' Morel bites down on his pipe in thought. 'You know, I'm not a father. But I can't imagine it's much fun for a kid, being raised by someone who thinks it's a waste of time to empathise with people.'

Youpi stares at him. And then, slowly, the corners of his mouth start to tweak, start to pull apart, until Morel is exposed to his satisfied grin. 'Who said anything about 'people'? The only one I empathise with, is her.'

'Hmm,' says Morel softly, almost in a murmur. 'I'm really not happy about any of this at all. And yet, you being alive and saying such things to me...I can't seem to feel bad about it either...'

* * *

The queen's first impression of Gon is...well, she's not sure. She's been choked by him, after all. She should feel nothing but fury. She knows Pouf would want her to. Instead, she opens her mouth and lets her voice flow out, hoping to sound calm and unruffled.

'W-w-why haven't you killed me-e? People like y-y-you killed my father.'

Well. So much for that.

For his part, Gon hesitates. And then slides down in front of her, as though they were nothing more than friends. The queen flinches back, as much as she is able to, her body buckling with strain as the unnatural coils of rock pin her arms to the floor. Even her tail is encased within its cold cling.

Gon smiles, ignoring Killua's wary eyes at his back as he settles down into a more comfortable position. His legs cross over each other with a small thud. He looks as though he's about to sink into an eager form of mediation.

'Yes, we did. But your father was going to kill a lot of us if we didn't.'

The queen pauses to digest this. 'I suppose that's fair,' she admits grudgingly. 'But still. You made Shia-Pouf very sad by doing so. And I'm not sure I can forgive that easily.'

Gon's smile widens. It becomes warm and bright and for some reason the queen feels like flinching back further, as though she needs to shield herself.

'You're angry for the sake of a friend,' he says slowly, the light in his eyes growing focused and hot. Their intensity reminds the queen of the sun outside, the way it glares out on a hot day to steal a portion of the sky from view.

But Gon seems to ignore her temporary blindness, mulling things over for what seems to be less than a second before he starts to talk again, his voice rushing out in a cascade of excitement.

'Okay! I've decided! I want to talk to you properly.'

The queen's attention is directed to Gon's side, down the tanned crawl of his arm as it hangs out of his short sleeve, for at the very end his fist glows with a tight, firm light, one that appears slightly orange and more molten than candle-flame. It licks the air instead of fluttering, the way real sunlight would and to the queen, it pulses, much like a heart.

Beside her, Gon mutters. The words seem to be addressed more to himself, than her, as though he's casting some form of spell, each word carefully timed to the rhythmic beat of light. And the queen can't help but let her eyebrows rise as the other teenager, the one with tuffs of spiky white hair that gnaw at her memory somehow, dashes forward, his eyes widening into rabbit-like terror.

'Gon!'

But Gon's fist is already in a tight, clever curl, as it shoots forward like a jack-in-the-box to shatter the rock that holds her down; all with a force that feels no more bruising than a conker knocking against the ground. It's almost perverse in its gentleness, the rock slipping from her flesh as though it shares the same softness as weakened eggshell and the queen watches, with amazement, as it falls into pieces like wet plaster.

'No fighting.' Gon raises a finger against her face and the queen peers at it, slightly cross-eyed. 'Listen to what I have to say about your parents first.'

The queen, nods, slightly startled, but deciding to give way to the curiosity that floods her at this statement. 'Alright.'

To his side Killua sighs, the terror wiped from his face as though it had never been there. He settles down with a grumble that manages to drag out a few quietly muffled swear words, eying the queen all the while. She stares at him; for even though his posture screams of relaxation, from his crossed arms to his kicked-up feet, something inside her goes very, very quiet before becoming very, very alert.

But even so, excitement creeps through her veins. And so she finds herself leaning forward with an odd, hungry gleam in her eye, one that has nothing to do her appetite. 'I already know my father was a king. A great one. All others were imposters.'

Gon sighs again. Then winces, as though recalling something unpleasant. 'What about your mother?'

'My guess would be a human,' she says slowly. 'Inconsequential.'

And here Gon fixes her with a steady eye. 'Hmm? Really? From the way I heard it, he gave up everything, even his title, to spend his last moments with her. You don't do that for someone inconsequential.' Then he bites his lip, as though forcing down an old shame. 'Would you like to know her name?'

The creature before him twitches, her tail swishing in imitation of an angry cat. 'Names are for those without titles,' she says, though she sounds a little wary.

Gon grins slightly, at the doubt he hears creeping into the other's tone. 'Her name was Komugi,' he begins. 'I can't tell you her full story; but I can tell you everything two good friends of mine told me.'

* * *

Komugi, learns the queen, was a blind peasant. She was born with a name instead of a title, but later on, became the holder of both. Her title she won through skill and effort and it is one that follows her for years. She played the same game the queen herself had been drawn to and she played it well.

The queen's fingers curl. It is...strange. This urge to play against her, this woman she now has a name for, to see if her human mind would be a challenge to usurp. What is it like? She wonders. To win a title from a real champion? To tear away something they feel with their heart and not their body?

Gon grins at her.

'What?' she snaps out.

'You want to know more.'

And even though the other teenager doesn't make a single motion towards the coiled lines of her fingers, not even with his eyes, the queen forces them to straighten out. She places them down along the firm line of her thigh with a force that barely shows.

'I wish to know more about her skill,' she says coolly.

Gon frowns, starting to rock up and down on his heels like an overeager child. 'You're missing the point,' he whines.

The queen eyes him dispassionately. 'Why do you do that?' she asks. You're wasting energy needlessly.'

'You could have said the same about Komugi devoting her life to gungi,' says Gon levelly, his eyes suddenly very, very serious. 'It didn't pay well. And the in the end it earned her the attention of your father. Without that she could have lived a long life. But in the end, she chose to stay with him.'

'Well, I'm grateful for that much, I suppose,' the queen acknowledges, titling her head to the side in a way that makes Gon twitch. He has no way of knowing how much like a small, playful kitten she resembles, curiosity welling up in her tone and making it soft. 'Without that I would have never existed.' But then her eyes turn narrow and sharp, staring at Gon with a raw, animal intensity, the likes of which, the man hasn't felt for a long time, perhaps not since he torn Neferpitiou apart with a blow. 'Why risk your life to come here and tell me these things?'

Gon takes a breath. 'I owe her.' He said. 'She was the first innocent person I ever threatened. And that was something that I...that I never thought I was capable of. And I can't apologise, not properly, because she's dead. So I guess I feel as though I owe her something.'

The queen is silent for a while, digesting this. Then she asks: 'and my story? How will my story end?'

Gon breaks out into a smile so wide that it is positively blinding. 'Don't you think that's up to you?'


	12. with the horror we plunder

Pouf screams and screams and Palm is tempted to say to hell with Gon's plans and dart forward to tear this monster's throat in two. But, she reminds herself, this...'man' has raised a baby from adulthood. A baby that has the power to undo all their hard work.

'How hungry does she get?' she murmurs thoughtfully, not even attempting to break into his screams. 'You should listen; I have more power than you right now. I can choose to educate you about Hisoka, but only if you give me something in return.'

Mercifully, something in her voice reaches him and he decides to give her eardrums a rest. He glares at her, something black and segregated still attempting to weasel its way out of his mouth. She watches with no little amount of trepidation as he draws it back in, almost instinctively.

'Enough to devour a mountain,' he states, an element of false calm running over his face. Then he smirks. 'But who knows how many eggs she has laid in the meantime.'

'She's not physically mature yet,' Palm says steadily. 'She may be hungry, but I doubt that hunger has ever been put to proper use.'

Pouf gives nothing away and his steady, superior smile enrages Palm. She breathes fiercely, palms clenched at her side, disturbed, not only at his smugness, but how he can alternate between fury and _this_, this stone-faced cockiness within seconds.

'It does not matter,' she says, pretending to believe her words. She can lie better this way. 'She's too dangerous. There are many, in the Hunter's association or will never stop tracking her, never stop hunting her until she is dead. And you are no longer in the NGL. Humans have social security numbers here, there are electronic systems that can tagged when they go missing. This queen will never possess the same anonymity your first one held, if only briefly. People will always vie for her death. And you cannot protect her from that.'

The smile slides from Pouf's face.

Palm leans closer, enjoying the fear that swells in his eyes there, the fear she hammers into him with every word she speaks. 'But we can keep her alive. If and only if, she never gives this world another Meruem.' She slides her face closer, almost as though she wishes to shift her cheek against his own, in parody of a nestling lover. 'In other words, we can keep Komugi's child alive, so long as she never gives birth to one of her own.'

And somewhere close by, hidden in the darkness, Hisoka smiles. 'Well now,' he says slowly, 'we can't have that, can we?'

* * *

The queen stares down at the palms Gon holds up for her to see. They're riddled with calluses, and the shifting hash of lines that dip and harden above the green-blue swish of veins she can see swimming beneath his skin, enchant her.

'I'm not a fortunate teller,' she says with no small amount of confusion. 'I can't read your lifelines.'

Gon laughs. 'No, I didn't really expect you to see meaning in them!' But then the laugher fades from his face and he draws his hands back to his side. 'You remember what I did before, when I freed you? The light you saw on my hands.'

She nods. 'You're a mage?' she says firmly. Then hesitates. 'Some form of wizard, yes?'

She hears something sputter from the white-hared boy in the shadows. It sounds, to her sensitive ears, like the aborted sound of held-back laughter, and the mere thought of it sends fury spiking into her pulse like a shard. She refuses, however, to send him so much as a look.

'No,' something flickers across Gon's face. She can't make out whether its disappointment or pity before it's gone. But it does nothing to appease her anger. 'No, it's...it's nen. Life-force. I guess Pouf never showed you how to handle it.'

'He says it's too dangerous.' She shoves down the flicker of churlish disappointment she feels at the memory before it drifts over her in the form of a full-blown sulk. 'But I can see it. Sometimes even feel it. But I didn't know it could be used...like that.'

He smiles again. 'I can show you some stuff. But will you make me a promise first?'

She eyes him. 'A promise?'

'Yes. You have to stop eating people.'

She blinks. 'I...' It makes sense, she supposes. 'I get very hungry,' she says cautiously. 'If I limited myself to just animals I suspect I would drive many of them to extinction.'

Gon frowns but the look on his face is insistent.

She sighs. 'I can try. But Shia-Pouf won't like it.'

'You learning nen?' Gon asks. 'Or you not eating people?'

She smiles. But there's no trace of humour in the line of her mouth. 'Both.'

'Hmm,' Gon eyes her. 'But you don't do everything he tells you, right? Besides, you're the queen! Doesn't he have to do what you tell him?'

'Only within reason,' she argues. 'Or would you do everything a child tells you?'

Killua snorts from his corner. 'You don't look like a child to me,' he points out. 'Or if you are, you won't be for long.'

She hasn't thought too much about it. But it's true. She knows Shia-Pouf is waiting for something to happen. For her to settle down, like a proper queen and start fulfilling her life-purpose. To give him a colony, a king. He expects great things from her. And sometimes, in quieter moments, she expects them from herself.

'I don't want to spend the rest of my life laying eggs,' she says slowly and it occurs to her, suddenly, that it's true. 'I liked doing other things, long before...'

Before what? Before listening to the restless shift of her blood, to the ache in her muscles that screams at her to sit, to eat, to start...well, to start the strain of being a mother?

'But,' she says firmly. 'I don't think I can stop it. I'm a queen. At some point, I'm gonna start laying eggs.' She pauses. 'I know you want me to stop. You'll probably end up killing me, or at least trying to.'

Gon stares at her. 'You know,' he says suddenly. 'I killed the guard who protected your mother. Their name...was Neferpitou.' He speaks, sounding both low and calm, but the queen finds herself cringing away from him, from the steady, adult-like detachment she can hear in his voice. 'But there was a price. I couldn't use nen for a while. I had to relearn it from scratch.' He smiles dimly and the queen is now put in mind of the sun breaking out from between clouds, letting a misty trace of gold trail through the atmosphere. She relaxes. But only slightly.

Gon, for his part, looks amused. 'It's not something I like to think about too much. But it's there.'

But then his head flinches away from, almost at the same time as her ear twitch. She can hear it, about half a mile away, the quick flicks and thuds against cave walls that resembles fist striking stones.

'A battle?' she asks carefully. She can't match the movements to Pouf – he can fly and dart in a way gravity doesn't usually allow other combatants.

'Yes.' Gon turns to her and bites his lip, giving an unsteady nod as he does so.

From behind him, Killua sighs. 'This,' he grumbles, 'is a stupid idea.'

'Maybe,' replies Gon, 'but I have a feeling, she should come.' He smiles at the queen. 'How about it, then?'

* * *

Youpi tenses. Morel breathes in and then releases a long, snakelike trail of smoke.

'Ah,' he says. 'They're going at it, huh?'

But Youpi isn't fooled. He sees the frown, too high up on the man's forehead for his sunglasses to disguise, and the way his upper lip lifts, just enough for a hint of teeth to shine through and grind down on the thin edge of his pipe.

'I could help you,' Youpi says levelly. 'I don't care about any of you humans here. And the fight could take place near where my queen is, where she's helpless. I would be stupid to betray you.'

Morel looks at him, his face ashen but still alien enough, without the glistening shine of human eyes, to be unreadable.

It takes everything Youpi has, not to start shoving at the rock that barricades his chest. So he goes for honesty.

'I'm too weak to beat you now,' he states. Then pauses, before adding a surly: 'maybe.'

Morel's lips twitch. Then, with a quick motion, he whips his pipe out of his mouth, twirling it round so that the thick pot-like end is pointed towards the ceiling. Youpi watches it, suspended above his head like a mighty fist of a god, just waiting to rush down and crush his skull into nothing. And then Morel moves. His pipe races down, not vertically but in a diagonal sweep, cleaving the rock into a tumbled mass of jagged pieces, so that it resembles the broken down rubble of an old road.

Youpi stands there, stunned, for a few seconds.

Then Morel stands. He shakes. Then he laughs.

'I really am-' he forces out, between starts and sputtered out breathes, '-the worst interrogator ever.'

Youpi shrugs and then turns on his heel, trying to hold back the instinctive wince as his chest groans. He can feel ripening with bruises that crawl their way up against his torso, much like a snake and he forces himself not to look down, to see the colour his skin has become stained with. He always dapples horribly. But it will not prevent him from running.

Behind him, Morel follows at a half-run, still flailing ungracefully as he chokes the laugher down.

* * *

Palm hisses and flinches away from a motion, one that had she stayed still, would have lost her her arm. Within seconds her hair is flying out, burying the muscles in her arm under thick coils of black; the colour hangs heavy on her, sweeping over both her body and clothes until only her face remains, like a pale mask eclipsing a statue. And the hair shines, with a fierce glimmer of white that plays on the dark like a ripple over water, making the motion beneath seem smooth, like liquid ink, all under the limited lamplight she's allowed herself to have.

But Hisoka is not someone who would whistle in appreciation at an opponent. Why whistle when there are so many delightful words to choose from instead?

'Mmm,' he purrs, and feels a flicker of disappointment that he has instinctively gone for a sound despite his thoughts. 'Lovely. That armour suits you.'

'Oh,' says Palm flatly. 'It's you. The clown who likes to prey on children.'

Killua's told her enough tales to have thoroughly soured her opinion of him.

The next moment she ducks, low and fast, as his arm snakes forward and erupts into a blurred line of grey, one that just narrowly misses the top of her head. He re-adjusts in mid-thrust, curving his hand back round with a deft twist of the wrist that puts Palm in mind of a magic trick. She barely has to think; she twists her head round and there's a slight clink, almost metallic-sounding as his nails clip against the side of her ear. She feels her lips lift into what she hopes is a smirk of satisfaction, one that only grows wider as she sees him frown and inspect the ends of his fingers. They're looking distinctly less pointy. As though someone has come down to brush against the very tips with sandpaper.

'Sharper than razor wire,' he says approvingly. 'My, my. I guess sometimes the best offense is defence, isn't it?'

She grits her teeth. 'Annoying,' she hisses, letting some of her anger seep into her voice; she can feel it unfurling beneath her vocal cords, resounding deep in her chest, that familiar, chaotic, spread of rage. 'I want to let go; it's been so long since I could. But you're not the sort of opponent I can fight against like that.'

Hisoka observes her, amused. 'An enhancer, then?' he asks, almost as if he is trying to do nothing more than allow a conversation to spring forth.

Palm growls, lowers her head like a rhino, and charges.

Pouf watches. He shouldn't care; in fact, he doesn't. But something in their motions speak to him, a flurry of a dance that darts out in front of him before shifting and moving round his imprisoned form. Palm moves simply, the shift and shine of hair adds a twirl of casual complexity to her motion, similar to the way water appears to flow more readily, when it is vibrantly illuminated by sunlight, the sparks of natural light catching in the jitter of ripples and waves. But Hisoka is a like a paragram made flesh, utilising both simple strikes, ones fast enough to hit, and combining them with dexterous bends and swoops. He springs and jumps, more monkey than man while Palm portrays the rigidity of the human form, or at least one when it is weighed down with armour. She isn't fast enough to hit him, though he however, is not quite strong enough to tear through her protective hair.

But there's no stalemate to be found here. Only a possible checkmate, a result that swims into view but Palm stumbles and falls, her foot caught in a swish of artfully hidden bungee gum. Another attached itself to her side, tugging insistently on the hair that protects her ribs. Palm grimaces as Hisoka's fist dives under and up, right onto the part of her body under the strain of a secondary force – though no matter how much it tries, the gum isn't strong enough to rip off her armour. But it is, however, insistent enough to peel it from her skin, just for an odd second or two.

But then that odd bound of time is all Hisoka has ever needed. His punch digs in, quick and clever. It's more than enough to make a bone break through into the squish of red it should be protecting, to make the heart pound, the pulse flutter. It's more than enough to make Palm shudder. And fall still.

'Will Gon be upset if I kill you?' wonders Hisoka out loud, though it's clear by the sheer glee in his voice that's it's a question he doesn't expect her to answer. 'Will he try to kill me if he sees your broken body on the floor? Oh, I do hope so.'

Palm's eyes dart up, quick enough to detect the flicker of white and red that announces the arrival of a playing card from between Hisoka's fingers. A second later it turns invisible – But Palm is skilled enough to predict the blur of its trajectory and concentrates, allowing a coil of her hair to untwist itself from the rim of her artificial hat. It shudders out, more of a spur now, or perhaps just an ebony tusk, reaching out to pierce the playing card and rip it into two diagonal chunks, effortlessly. The pieces fly past Palm's face harmlessly and she can't help but growl – one of those had come dangerously close to her eye.

'Wasn't the king enough for you?' she sneers. 'Or have you decided to become the executer of their species?'

Beside her, she sees Pouf tense, his fists curling beneath the grey pressure of the rock.

'Oh, it was far from enough,' Hisoka says smoothly, his eyes fixed on the shuddering mass of her hair – it spikes in her rage, becoming a meandering, restless thing, more alike to liquid than the make-shift steel it should imitate. 'I actually wanted a challenge.'

'How dare you.' Pouf's voice drifts out from his lips, in a tight cold sound, one reeking with distain. 'The only rightful king this sorry world has ever seen – and you dare say he was-' he chokes briefly on the past tense, before raising his eyes, perfect mask in place. 'You dare to say he wasn't enough?'

Hisoka just looks at him, a thoroughly bored expression on his face. A playing card emerges from between his fingers once again and Pouf's fists clench tighter together in response.

'No. Not as he was then. And you know it too. I dare say you are far weaker now then you were originally. I can sense it, you see. All that squandered potential.' A quick twinkle appears in his eyes and it gleams like a very small star, cold in its foreign light. 'Netero was a clever bastard.'

Palm hisses from between her teeth. 'And what was Komugi then? We both know any possible potential of her wouldn't have...suited your tastes. Was her death simply an afterthought?'

This time the look Hisoka flashes her is one of surprise. 'What? You think I-' he pauses, and then chuckles grimly. 'No, I am many things. But I am not wasteful.' He shudders at the very thought. 'Why would I kill the last surviving parent and leave the baby to starve? Especially when I wanted the baby, oh, so badly, to live?' He turns, fixing Pouf with a sly look. 'You'd know more about killing out of...mmm, shall we say jealously? Wouldn't you? You seem the type.'

Palm freezes. And despite everything despite her training, Pouf senses, rather than see, the look of dawning horror on her face and just how badly, she wants to turn to him, to turn to him and run him through.

What a stupid, impulsive woman. Clearly not fit to be a warrior. Just like Youpi.

'In the end,' he says slowly, frowning somewhat at the new, brittle quality to his words, 'I realised that the king and I were the only fit ones to lead the new kingdom. Pitou was too sentimental – they valued the king's flights and fancies too much and strove to make him happy above all else, instead of attempting to guide him into being a better leader-'

'You mean they valued Komugi's life,' breaks in a new voice. Killua strides through the gloom, the tell-tell sound of electricity beginning to crackle within the gloom. His hair is already beginning to glow with an un-sprung fire, as blinding as snow caught under sunlight and his eyes find Palm's slumped over form and harden.

Pouf if he could have, would shrug. 'And Youpi was too easily lead. More of a soldier than a guard.' He pauses, his lips twitching. It is as close as he can manage to laughter. 'You should see the way he reacts to her. The queen, I mean. Like an bodyguard or an dotting old bloodhound, content only with her own level of comfort. In some ways he was worse than Pitiou. Sometimes, I wonder if I shouldn't have killed him.'

'You considered killing your own comrades?'

Killua's eyes dart back as Gon steps out behind him, his face carefully blank.

Pouf grins, with a sharp feral twist to his mouth. 'Oh no,' he says softly. 'I'm pretty sure you were behind the death of one of them, weren't you? Neferpitou – the _kindest _one, of us all.' He's only half joking – Neferpitou was far from kind after all. But it's worth it to see the blinked-back strain of suffering that crosses Gon's face, one that arranges itself to accept the surge of rage and disbelief that infuses it. 'Pitou was, after all, the only one of us in the end who wanted that woman to live.'

'You k-ki-killed her?'

The question is a soft one, tentatively asked. But as soon as it touches Pouf's ears, it's as though the world has crumpled to a halt. He watches dully, as out before him steps the queen. Electricity jumps and darts by her side and Pouf sees her, more child than adult in the way she holds herself, eyes awash with something close to understanding.

'You killed my mother.' It isn't a question this time. 'You killed her and tried to stamp out whatever she might have left in me.' She smiles and Pouf's heart clenches at the faint line of bitterness that comes to rest there. 'No wonder you hated playing Gungi so much. It must have really frightened you.'

Her eyes flicker out to the weaving jump of sparks that fly out over Killua's hair; but it's not the ripple of temporary halos that truly catch her eyes, or the way they break on the jagged spikes. It's the colour, and the shape beneath, that hold her breath. 'I...might remember now. I don't have any pictures, not really but her hair...it was spiky to the touch.' There's a wistful tint to her smile now and it almost overcomes the bitterness. 'I wonder what she would think, knowing how many of her fellow humans I've consumed?'

Gon turns to Hisoka as her words fall silent, the strain on his facial expression now fully accepting of the rage that falls there. It comes to life in his eyes, fully at home there as they flicker toward Palm.

'Get out. You've hurt my friend.'

Hisoka pouts. 'So cold. Besides Gon, if you really thought you could win against me, you would have already attacked, wouldn't you? And what you're doing here, I simply can't allow.' He gestures towards the queen. 'Not when there's a chance to create another king.'

It's stupid but for one brilliant moment, hope flares in Pouf's chest, reaching out to capture his heart in a rough squeeze.

'No,' says the queen loudly. 'I don't want to be a puppet. Not to my instincts, not to you-' she motions to Hisoka with a tentative tweak to her head and Pouf is gladdened to see her survival instincts are still somewhat intact, ' - and now, no more, to you.'

Her eyes find Pouf and he is startled to see just how miserable they are. Meruem would never have worn the look of betrayal so openly. He wouldn't even have allowed the idea to touch him, to scar him quite so openly. 'I don't want to have ten thousand babies. And I don't want to eat ten thousand people either.'

'Good choice.' The new voice is low, reverberating. It flows with a sort of a glad spirit, though that's probably not the reason Hisoka narrows his eyes at it.

The voice is replaced with a series of soft, steady steps, ones that don't quite line up with the large form they support – that more than anything else alerts Hisoka to the skill level of this man as he appears, his humongous pipe slung against his back with the same casual sort of grace a backpacker might wear after a brief foray into the mountainside. Behind him comes somebody who makes Killua whistle and allows surprise to cross over Gon's face.

The queen starts to dart forward, joy springing onto her face at his appearance, before both Gon and Killua's hands clamp down on her elbows to yank her back. 'Youpi!'

Youpi grunts and then nods, eyes narrowing slightly at the hands still wrapped round her arms before his gaze drifts down to his own limbs, ones snaked over with bruises from the rock that held him. With a colossal effort, he shrugs away the anger that jabs at his thought, at the need to rush forward and snap off those human arms still attached to his queen.

'Ah,' he remembers, 'you were telling the truth.' He nods to Morel. 'Thank you.'

Morel shrugs at Gon and Killua, as if to say, see, I haven't lost my mind after all. Then he turns to Hisoka.

'I'm glad to see you made it. You remind me of another ant once, who made a similar choice. And I'll tell you what I told him – if you stick to it, I'll protect you with my life.' Morel inclines his head to her briefly before puffing out his chest, thumb plunging down against the shirt that stretches tautly across it. 'My name is Morel. It's nice to meet you, Kokoriko.' And then he turns to Hisoka. 'Hey there. I'd say the odds have evened out a bit, wouldn't you say?'


	13. As this world's torn asunder

There's a tense silence. Kokoriko (and she's still not sure what to think of that – she's never needed a name before, no Pouf _told_ her that she never required one) finds her eyes flicking between the people around her, their shadows spilling out into forms a lot less rigid and uncluttered than the deliberate stillness that surrounds her. She can't see, above the curtain-like drape of darkness that touches their feet, if their muscles are coiled, ready to strain and push them forwards into each other; but she can feel her own tense in response, despite the fact that there's no visual clue for her to grab onto. Because she's not a fighter, has never been trained to be one. And perhaps that's Pouf's mistake.

She can see him now, straining into her vision from the corner of her eye. But the rock that holds him doesn't so much as let out a crack.

'Are you a betting man?' Morel asks Hisoka conversationally. It's difficult to make out, but perhaps the fingers at his side stir, a trail of grey sneaking out alongside the end of his pipe to join them. 'How much do you usually gamble?'

'I'm prepared to accept certain risks,' replies Hisoka evenly. He pauses and then tuts. 'You're making a series of very bad choices, little-ant,' he says softly and with a start Kokoriko realises that he is talking to her. 'You could have been great. Or rather; you could have _made_ someone great. But now you will let them rip out everything that makes you glorious.'

She chews her lip, anger climbing up within her. It makes her want to clamber up a mountain and conquer the world, makes her want to be strong, strong enough to be worthy of this deceptive feeling that builds up inside her.

'It wasn't any part of _me_ that you thought was glorious,' she says, biting out each word with a coolness that surprises her – it feels totally alien from the rush of heat that brushes against her insides. 'Just the possibility. And playing gungi taught me that possibility is a heady thing. It makes you take risks and sees paths that you become too anxious to protect. It clouds the vision.'

She hesitates. Would her mother be proud of her for learning this?

'Shia-Pouf,' she says carefully, trying not to let too much fondness seep into her tone. 'Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me your feelings are nothing like Hisoka's. That you weren't...that you weren't just waiting for me to become an incubator.'

He lowers his head, jaw grinding as he battles with the urge to spill out something, anything, that will sound like salvation. In her better moments, years from now, Kokoriko will wonder if it was maybe the truth holding him back, if maybe he was wondering if there was anything left for him to lose and whether he could, somehow, still save it.

But as his mouth opens and Kokoriko waits, breathlessly, for the words to come and offer her some sort of deliverance...his head slumps to one side. And instead of words, out comes a gurgle. Kokoriko's eyes sweep down, disbelieving, to the trickle of blood that sprouts out below the playing card, now wedged firmly into his throat.

She screams. And then there are colours rebounding around her, motions to her side. Someone forces her to the ground, or at least a powerful hand does. But the fingers splayed on her spine don't matter; only Shia-pouf, the one thing filling her vision, does. She finds herself crawling towards him, handful by handful, stretching across the floor and yanking herself forwards in a series of jerkish dragging motion, feeling like a pebble caught inside the spin of an ocean wave, one that has yet to crash against the shore. And it all cumulates in a smash of tears against her face, salt-water merging into the line of her lip as she reaches his feet and stares up into his blank eyes. But there is no disappointment there, no pride. No Shia-pouf.

She is dimly aware that her nose is running and her hands reach up to flinch against her face, remembering how much he hated that, how he could not abide the snot, no matter the form, drifting down her face.

She looks at him again, touches his shoe. Nen flies over her, flares out, brushing against her pores as Gon slams his fist down against skin. She feels warm, as something similar to light touches her, swirling over her skin with traces of warmth. She has no way to understand that this is her life-force.

And she looks up at Pouf, sees him suddenly as a canvas, veins and muscle covering up his bones as surely as paint strikes the paper. She feels for the light, the warmth surrounding her and pushes it up, against his shoes, through his clothes. Directly into his skin. He is like a gungi board, his body made up of pieces that need to be moved together and against each other in strategic manoeuvres, one usually directed by the brain.

She has only read a few medical texts. But still, she begins to push and pull, trying to remember the words and letting the lingering warmth of his own body direct her.

This should go together, it tells her, not in words, but with barely-remembered sensation, memories of unblemished lines and the chippings of dead skin uncurling from new. There shouldn't be an ugly gash where purple blood can spill forth. Carefully, Kokoriko patches his throat together, twining blood vessels like threads, pushing muscles over and against each other like slabs of concrete. Then she hesitates. She doesn't know how to reach his brain, how to tell it to heal, to make it work. To make it think, like there's still a soul trapped inside.

'I'm sorry.' There's a voice and a hand at her shoulder. It shakes her gently. 'I'm sorry, but you can't save him.'

She doesn't look back, not once.

The voice, the hand, they pull her away and shoves Palm beneath her fingers. Without thinking, she lets the light swirl beneath her, lets it reach out and settle into skin that is not Shia-Pouf's. She doesn't even think to cry.

She doesn't even notice when the warmth of Youpi's large hand settles onto her back, landing as lightly as an insect on a flower. For if he presses down, lets his muscles loosen, enough for the weight of his fingers to smear themselves across her shoulders, perhaps there would be a flicker in her eyes.

But Youpi does not press. He hovers.

Even if he ends up dead later on, he thinks, their hands will waver when they lift them against the queen. They will feel doubt, now that she is helping one of their own.

* * *

Kokoriko does not move, does not flutter into Youpi's arms when she is done. Instead he picks her up and she presses the side of her face into his neck, feeling the tendons loosen beneath his skin, and hearing his breath catch as she presses down more firmly, carving out a small cavern for her head to rest. That's when his pulse forces itself upon her, beating inside her ears and reverberating like the dizzying rush of a stream. She lets the sound surround her, lets it take her away as they move, becoming lost for hours. And then, magically, she is found.

'Your majesty.' Youpi shakes her, gently, and she blinks. Your majesty, please wake up.'

'Call me Kokoriko,' she says, feeling oddly proud at the way her voice refuses to shake. But the feeling flees soon enough, as she remembers how part of her world has fallen away. She chooses instead to look around, at the room they are now in, a grand room, the sort she has only ever seen in storybooks, all red and gold and, oddly enough, pink.

Youpi sets her down on a nearby settee and she stares, blankly, at the people she is introduced to, people called Colt and Alluka. Alluka, at least, is very nice. She laughs and stares curiously at her feathered hair, reaching out to yank at it with a gentle tug before asking if she can brush it with shinning eyes.

Kokoriko says yes.

Alluka runs away into the swirl of pink cushions and red velvet armchairs to find a hairbrush that she swears she hasn't dropped down the back of a sofa. Rolling his eyes, Killua follows her. And then casually, almost too casually, his fingers reach out and ram their way into a crease between two cushions, his hand emerging almost instantaneously, as the missing hairbrush dangles from his grasp in a sorry mixture of horse-hair and flattened oak, one that curves out its sides into the cartoonish flare of a whale shape.

Alluka rushes over, relief in her eyes. 'You're so smart, brother,' she says, clapping her hands with such glee, that Kokoriko is almost halfway sure it is an act. Shia-pouf would know, she thinks. In fact, he would be sure of it.

_Such exuberance_, he would sneer. _And with a smile to go along with it. Such a thing is a decoration that humans faces use to deceive you. Remember that_.

But you were a deceiver too, Shia-pouf, she thinks. How am I supposed to mourn you when you weren't quick enough to tell me how much of you was a lie?

Colt, she notices, isn't anything like Shia-pouf. He does not bow to her and only lowers his head so that he can look her in the eye. He holds himself in a stately manner, one different to Pouf's. He is not as flexible, for one thing. His wings weigh him down, heavier and blacker than Shia-pouf's ever were, folded, instead of merely lowered, when he sits. He offers her a biscuit.

She stares at it. She's not sure whether she's allowed to ask for meat.

Luckily Palm solves this dilemma by shoving a chicken leg into her hand. Kokoriko stares at her, at the bruises that litter the woman's arms, the ones she couldn't brush away entirely, not to sweep them back into her skin tone. And then Palm, wonder of wonders, smiles.

'I can cook you something later,' she says. 'a proper meal. Would you like that?'

Kokoriko thinks about this. 'It's good to try new things, right?'

Palm's smile fades, though Kokoriko isn't sure exactly, why.

'Yes.'

And then Alluka flounces down next to her, her skirt puffing up in a rush of colour. Kokoriko looks from it, to the beaming smile on Alluka face and then at the brush the other girl waves in front of her face.

'Can I? Can I?'

Kokoriko nods and then turns her head. She doesn't have the energy to refuse.

Alluka's hands are firm but gentle as she handles the hairbrush. There's no hesitation in her gestures when she puts it against Kokoriko's head and starts to pull it through the soft spikes that are not quite, and never will be, strands. The bristles feels scratchy, raw against the hard bone-like filament wedged in the centre of each feather, but Kokoriko simply pulls a face and bears with it. Gungi has taught her patience as well, after all.

'It's so pretty,' exclaims Alluka marvelling. 'when the light catches it just right, it shines! It's like you've got jewellery growing out of your head!'

From her distant left, Killua chokes. Kokoriko thinks he's laughing, or trying not to. Her suspicions are proven right when she feels Alluka turn to stare at him.

'Brother, don't laugh at a girl's hair! It's rude.'

Gon smiles at them both. 'She's right Killua. It's rude to laugh at someone's hair – and their words. Especially if those words are meant nicely.'

Killua abruptly shuts up.

Wow, thinks Kokoriko. I wish I had had that kind of power over Shia-pouf.

'What happened to Hisoka?' she asks suddenly, not caring if her words have the power to break the peaceful atmosphere that's settled over them all. To her, it simply feels numb and wrong, like a shock blanket that stifles the very air inside the room. To her surprise, she actually receives an answer.

'He ran away.' Killua folds his arms behind his head as he scoffs, though his eyes look deceptively calm. 'He's not an idiot. He's good and if it had just been me and Gon, we would have had a difficult time; probably lost. But we had Morel as well and Palm had worn him out a bit. And those two have a lot more experience than us. He would have been an idiot to actually try and win with those odds.'

It feels wrong to voice it, now that Shia-pouf is dead, dead and not with her, but her mouth opens and she hears a voice that she still thinks is hers ask, 'what now? What will you do with me?'

There's silence this time. But though she doesn't speak, Palm rises from her place on a nearby sofa and steps forward confidently. And it's stupid, but there's a feeling of safety and home that engulfs Kokoriko when she sees the liquid warmth in the other woman's eyes.

Palm leans down into a half-kneeling crouch, one that is not quite a bow and her hands came to rest against Kokoriko's, fingers leaning onto fingers and thumbs stroking against thumbs. Kokoriko stares down at the slender elegance of the skin against her own, at the sleekness of those powerful muscles and the way they dwalf her own despite how small they seem against someone like Morel. She's not sure what it is exactly that keeps her from moving away. Perhaps it's instinct, this quaint surge of familiarity that tells her deep inside that Palm is one of hers. Or at the very least, an ant_ like_ her.

Then why does she feel nothing similar when she looks at Colt? She risks a glance at him and sees the adoration in his eyes as he looks over at a small red-haired girl, one who has been watching her with a gaze that feels deceptively passive. It makes her feel both small and incredibly young and she turns away in a huff.

That girl doesn't feel like an ant. She feels like something sly and intelligent wearing the skin of one.

'You have to make a choice.'

Kokoriko turns back with a start, realising that Palm has started to talk. The woman's hands press down a little firmer, shifting their weight into something that actually falls against Kokoriko's skin, just to ensure she has her attention.

'We can't let you go if you're just going to create another problem for us further down the line. A lot of people died the last time, because we failed to reach the last queen before she gave birth to your father.'

Colt's wings quiver slightly and there's a displeased tilt to his mouth, like he wants to interject, like something about the way Palm's phrased this has struck him the wrong way. But a quelling glance from the little red-head seems to make him shift back into his seat.

'I-I...' Kokoriko pauses, licks her lips, then starts again. 'I already said I didn't want to start having a mill-million babies.'

'Ten thousand, actually,' mutters Killua, though he holds up his hands and looks away when both Alluka and Gon glare at him.

'But...'Palm looks at Kokoriko all the more keenly. 'We have to ensure that doesn't happen. No matter what. And that either means we have to kill you. Or we have to render you infertile.'

Kokoriko's brows draw together. 'Like...like an operation. Do you...even know how I work?'

'That's not the only way.'

Everyone looks over at Alluka the unusual gravity of her voice pulling them in. Beside her, Killua tenses, his fingers curling neatly into his palms with a feline grace. Only the way his skin flares into an even sharper white gives away how rocky and quick-cut the motion truly is.

Alluka stares at them all, her gaze unusually somber.

'She could make a wish.'

People stare at each other, confused, while Killua tenses even more.

'Hmm? What's the little girl saying?' Morel twists a finger into his ear, giving it a good rub before squeezing it out. Then he favours Killua with a heavy stare. 'This isn't going to be a repeat of the last time at the hospital, right? I don't know if I can cover that up again.'

'Why not?' Gon blinks and looks round. 'At least this way, no one will get hurt, not really.'

Killua grits his teeth together. 'Alluka,' he says firmly. 'You won't be healing her, you'll be taking something away. There will be requests involved.'

Alluka gives him a blank stare. 'There are always requests involved. Besides what we'll be doing is the opposite of healing. We'll be stealing. The requests after...will just be more giving.'

Killua gives her a very level stare and she almost flinches. Almost.

'Please,' she says finally. 'Just trust me.' She looks round at them all, her bottom lip wobbling out into the beginning of a childish pout. 'Please, ' she says again, this time more firmly. 'She's like me. And I want to talk to her alone.' She takes a breath. ' I'll chase you all out of here, if I have too!' she declares, looking fierce suddenly, like a kitten with it's claws out, hands twisted into pudgy fists and eyes tight and narrow beneath her frown.

Maybe it's the timbre of her voice that does it. But surprisingly, they allow Alluka her request; Kokoriko's not sure if it's because they trust Alluka herself, or if they trust Killua's judgement.

'My sister knows what do in situations like this, better than I do,' he says firmly and ushers Gon out of the room with a firm prod to the small of his back. That won't of course, thinks Kokoriko wryily, prevent anyone else from listening in though, will it?

'I want Youpi here,' she says firmly. 'He's the only one properly on my side, right Youpi?'

She looks at him and he smiles at her, reaching out to the small hand she offers him and curling his fingers round almost as though he is trying to form a fist around her wrist. And then, sharply, she tilts her head to the side.

'If I had asked, about my mother, would you have told me?'

Her voice sounds like a whip; it comes down hard and flat, with the same quick streak of motion. Hard enough, by far, to make Palm hesitate on her way out of the room.

Youpi's eyes widen slightly, but he does not hesitate to speak. 'I do not know,' he says calmly. 'I would have no real reason to hide it from you...but if Pouf had said something, given me a reason to think that knowing might have hurt you somehow, I would have said nothing.'

She nods. She can accept that. If she had thought to ask about her mother before, if he had lied to her then...perhaps she might have tugged her hand away. But instead she squeezes the hand wrapped around her own with as much strength as she can muster.

It is only then that the door manages to close with a firm 'bang' and Alluka leans against it, panting heavily. Then she straightens, and with a huge grin and an equally huge whirl of her skirts, she rushes back to Kokoriko and beams up into her frowning face.

'Let me finish brushing your hair.'

It's not even phrased as a question, instead stuck somewhere between a request and a demand. Kokoriko frowns even more at this, but she's got no real reason to say 'no', and finds herself patting Youpi on the hand to release her – which he does, reluctantly. Then she stands and walks over to the hairbrush, plucking it artfully from the sofa cushions before it can slump away further into the realm of the lost. She side-eyes Alluka.

'How often do you misplace this thing?'

Alluka pouts and stretches out a hand.

Sighing, Kokoriko drops it into her palm with a slight smack.

Alluka makes a face at the careless motion but seconds later, she is humming cheerfully to herself as she begins to tug the brush against the cluttered feathers that line Kokoriko's scalp.

'Do you seriously want me to wish for my own...mutilation?'

Alluka pauses.

'No. I want you to wish for you.' She smiles and taps on Kokoriko's hands carefully. 'You know...the other me, the one who grants these wishes, is very good at healing, like you. But, I've asked her and she says it works differently for you. We don't push any part of my nen into other's. It's more like...Nanika says she threads the universe through the missing patches in other people, like sewing. She doesn't see or feel time the way I do, so she can re-work what used to be there, by plucking stuff out of the moments before. She says you feed off memories, the ones so small and everyday, that people don't really _see_ them as memories and they lie there, almost forgotten. You have to build up a picture first, of what you're trying to fix.'

Kokoriko blinks at how grown-up Alluka sounds all of a sudden, before she focuses on the words spilling out. She remembers how she had failed to clear away Palm's bruises, back when she was lost in her own shock, and for a moment, understanding eclipses her mind. But then it's driven away with a scowl as she tries to take in the rest of what Alluka's saying.

'Other me?'

Alluka laughs. 'Yep! Her name's Nanika!'

She says it like there's no room for debate, like it's a perfectly healthy thing to say. But maybe, in this strange new world of nen and what it can do for others, it is.

Kokoriko sinks into her thoughts. The hairbrush against her hair takes up Alluka's favoured paths against her scalp and the repetitive motion feel soothing somehow, like a long-lost surge of feeling. For Kokoriko has never been to the ocean, has never heard the whish-whoosh of waves against the shore or seen the curl of their waves come undone as they sink into sand, and yet she imagines that hearing them might feel a little like what she is experiencing now.

'C-ca-an I have a-a-any wish?'

'Any wish.'

'I want...'

* * *

It's not gonna be a huge wish guys. Don't worry, nobody's gonna die. Maybe.

Also, in response to a query by a reviewer, the character in my avatar is Togame, from the series Katanagatari.


	14. To break, like a feast, on the eyes

It doesn't feel like fate, but it should. That feeling, that _inevitability_ that she's read about in books, it doesn't exist here, not as she steps along these streets, each stride bringing her closer to the palace that wavers, in her vision, like a lantern that pierces the gloom.

'Show me,' she had asked, not three minutes ago and Alluka had bent forwards, her eyes dipping into black, 'show me, take me there, but not too far; I want to walk in by myself.'

At this, Youpi's hand had tensed around her own.

'I can-'

'No,' she had cut off firmly. 'I want to do this by myself.'

And now she is here, at the gates, barring the only gap in the wall from the rest of the world. She could hear pacing from around the corner, the small thud of sand being stirred by a soldier's steps so she crouches then runs, leaping up through the air like a cat before her knuckles scrape over the barbed tips of the gate. And then she is free, leaving the worrying sound behind her as she races down the path, no, the road, something that sprawls out like a wide, dirt-filled race track towards a building that has more holes in it than a weathered carcass. She ignores the massive mounds placed beside it, buoyed up with the earth harvested out of the trenches around them in a makeshift moat, ignoring further the unpleasant smell of hurried burial and the bones that poke out from beneath like sticks; for deep below, she can sense the sullen smell of mummified flesh, wrapped down, beneath the weight. For she has no way to know their history, other than the few stories she pried out of Youpi before she came here, stories of a grand 'selection' and the inevitable cost.

But she can't help but gasp at the sudden, sharp burn that thrusts up through her feet as she passes these misshapen tombs. She knows instantly what it means; but doubts anyone else could feel it and the way it clings to cells, pulling, no yanking at the precious blood that threads its way close by.

So she races on, her thoughts too twisted with her own personal loss to offer up anything remotely close to sympathy for all the other lost souls stuck in this place.

Soon she is bounding through corridors, tapestries clinging to the floors rather than the walls, the wind tugging at their corners as it pushes in through more holes than the windows provide. And she stops, touching the crumbling scars these leave behind, seeing the way they expose fine red rugs to the outside elements, enough for their colours to stain, to drift down into a rustic purple richer than the outside skin of a grape.

Beautiful, she thinks, and then freezes, caught in a weird spasm of guilt. It occurs to her, in a way that it has not before, that her mother was blind, barred from witnessing many of the things she has always taken for granted. Would she, Kokoriko, growing up, have had to censor herself? Would she not be able to paint and point things out for fear of hurting her mother, knowing that no matter what, there was no way the human could have offered an objective opinion?

Kokoriko stares down at the tasselled corner she holds in her hands, then with a frown, lets her nails dig in, ripping it into little, streamlined chunks. The loose thread bulges out from around the sharp grey texture of the thorny barbs at the end of her fingers and under this light she is caught by the sudden perception of them being claws. She frowns again. When did that happen? Have they always been able to do that? Or is she simply growing, maturing, turning into something that can cleave through the local ecosystem rather than usurp it entirely?

She sighs and lets the rug drop down to the floor. And with a heart that feels heavy rather than hollow, she starts to wander the floors, head peeking out between pillars, as she catches scrapes of green and marble, small, regulated courts and gardens, fenced in as though her father wanted to guard them jealously and let no one see. With a jolt, she realises that it was no design of her father's that held parts of this palace hostage. No, he had merely come in and taken over the work of another, burying his way into a human habitation in the way Pouf probably envisioned her, or her child, doing one day in the future.

She shudders.

Eventually she arrives on the floors above. The scent of her father and mother have long gone of course, been whipped away by both wind and rain. But there are traces of them left behind. A broken board with scattered pieces, for instance, alongside a half-eaten bread roll, the shape of it worn down by the small gnawing of human teeth. And cushions, their stuffing, spilled or ripped across the floor, littering the nearby stain of blood on the tiles. Probably, she thinks ruefully, her father's work.

Her eyes, as always, return to the gungi pieces, drawn in by their closed off circles of black and white. Some of them are shoved away, hidden under shadows and the low-lying slant of the board. Others are arranged against the floor like fireworks, spread unevenly into dots that form, to the imaginative eye, giant serpentine coils. It is as though a god gathered everything up in one hand and then scattered them, thrusting them down into the ether of the floor.

But some are missing, Kokoriko notices. Even if she wants to, she could not play a game. And it occurs to her suddenly, to wonder if both her mother and father had felt the same magnetic pull to the board, to the game in the same way she did. And if Komugi could not see, perhaps her fingers guided her forward, acting as a dowsing rod against the smooth contours of the pieces. Perhaps, if she had lived, they would have shared a great many conversations after all, not all of them spoken, perhaps, indeed, having them live only through moves reserved solely for the board.

Gungi after all, is not something that can be merely _viewed_.

This thought cheers her up. And is, she suspects, what she needs. Proof that she was their daughter. Maybe it would have been clearer, if she had asked to go to the house they made their home, the sanctuary they fled to after the Hunters Society bombed this palace and sealed it off from the world. But _here_, was where they_ began_. Where the first few moments, that would determine the making of the being known as Kokoriko, came to rest. Everything that happened later, would not have been so without the days her mother crept through halls that dwarfed her with splendour she could not see. Kokoriko can feel it, rebounding in her veins, this certainty that she was right to come here, to walk through the corridors and place her feet into the same places where her parents once trod. It is, she images, what stepping inside a church or temple must feel like, at least to a human.

'Ah,' comes a voice, as smooth as honey and as soft as silk. 'As I thought, I was right to trust my lovely intuition. It never lets me down.'

Kokoriko turns. She is thoroughly unsurprised to see Hisoka there.

'Hello' she offers steadily in return. 'What made you think I would be here? Aside from your...intuition.'

Hisoka beams and steps forward like a giddy child. His boots press hard against the small black lines that divide each tile from one another. 'Step on a crack and break your mother's back,' he half-sings, his eyes laughing at her as the honey in his voice sours and the silk in his tone, what little of it remains, clings to her ears like spider web. 'You should keep more of an open mind. Intuition, superstition, even the ones in little rhymes...they all lead us back somewhere. Sometimes they might even pull us forwards. After all, yours dragged you here, hmm?'

Kokoriko tilts her head to one side. 'Is that your way of saying you don't want to tell me how you really found me?' she asks, though she can't quite mask the doubt in her tone.

Hisoka laughs. 'My, my, you adorable thing. I am a Hunter you know. That title isn't just for show.' He flicks out a playing card from between his fingers out of seemingly nothingness.

Kokoriko scowls. The motion is too fast, too furious, for her eyes to detect little more than a grey blur.

And Hisoka smiles, one lone finger waving at her in reprimand . 'Don't be like that. Spoilt brats who don't get the answers fed to them aren't very cute.'

'You don't want me to be cute,' Kokoriko pointed out. 'You want me to start growing up and lay eggs.'

'Hmm,' says Hisoka.

She sighs. 'You do know that you walked through a landmine of poison to follow me, right?'

Hisoka frowns. 'I heard rumours, yes. But I can detect no real ill effect.'

Kokoriko twists her head to the side. 'Idiot,' she says softly. And she wonders at how Hisoka is so eager for pleasure, so much so, that he would eagerly throw his life away for a simple stalking session.

For she has felt the grips of the poison, of its lingering toxicity as soon as she passed the burial mounds, felt it rise through the earth to taint her skin. And she had felt something beneath rise up and answer, to twist and touch beneath her nen, which rose up, like a white flame, to envelop her body. She has never been, she realises now, truly healthy. There is something inside, in the beat of her heart, in the twist of her cells, stretched out across the lines of her muscles, drawing, like a bridge, from one part of her body to the next. It is poison, death, breathed into her from the cells of her mother and father, trudging alongside her every waking moment.

Perhaps it is because she has lived with it for so long, from the moment of her conception. Perhaps because she shares genetics with one of the most powerful beings who ever lived. But her body resists, not immune, never totally immune, and her nen now grows, racing against the memory of when her cells were just a little bit healthier, but still stronger, far stronger than the average human's, working through her veins, to repair and guide all at once.

It is strange, but she is glad than Palm and the others hadn't been with her too long. She didn't what to see them die from an unassailable cough, a cough she has, once or twice, heard barking out from the lungs of both Youpi and Pouf. A cough she is not sure will ever touch her throat, not until, at least, she is too old and sickly to use her nen anymore.

'I can heal you', she offers, 'it's not too late. It's been months, maybe years, I'm not sure how long. But it's weakened slightly. I can give you back your life; one that will last.'

Unlike Youpi she thinks sadly. He's lived with the toxicity so long it's became a part of him, slowly sapping his strength. She can shove it back, for a few months at a time maybe, but it isn't a cure, isn't anywhere close. Just another small offering for another stretch of borrowed time. How ironic that it took the awakening of her nen for her to see that she is doomed to lose them both, Pouf and Youpi, no matter her actions.

Hisoka stares at her, looking oddly perturbed.

'Fascinating...but foolish. I slew your father and he gave his life gladly, for you and your mother both. He would not make the same mistake you are thinking, of offering to show mercy for an enemy.'

'Mercy?' she says softly. 'No, I am not so sure that it is mercy that I am offering.'

She approaches him warily, fingers outstretched, and to her surprise sees him spring back a step jauntily, rather much like a startled horse. Frowning, she lowers her hand, feeling foolishly like she has a gun clenched within her fist, her fingers itching to direct the nozzle to the ground.

'You aren't frightened of me,' she murmurs, 'so why do you move away so fast? I can't hurt you.'

'Can't you?' asks Hisoka, equally as soft. 'I rather think you can. I don't know the restrictions of your ability, but if you heal, you might also be able to hurt.'

She grins. 'Oh yes. That's true. But if I leave you here, you will die, much quicker than you'd like. Where's the fun in that choice, Hisoka? Where's the pleasure?'

Hisoka pouts. 'It's true. I'd rather die with a hand in my chest, someone's fingers clamped against my twisting heart. The sonata of my pulse, the rhythm it would strike...it's enough to send me into a tizzy.' His grins widens into a leer and Kokoriko tries, pointedly, not to remember the way his eyes danced over Gon's form, not five hours back.

'That death might fit your character,' she says conversationally. 'But this one will too. Trust me. The nen that soaks through this poison, it is like malice incarnated within the ground, within the very air. I don't know the people who made it, but I feel that the intent behind those atoms that chip away against the bloodstream, is dark. Savage. Cold. Like snow building up over a corpse. I rather think you would understand those kind of emotions.'

Hisoka makes a face. 'It works a little too slowly for my taste. I can be patient, but only when the final result burns brilliantly. A little, I suppose you could say, like a firework.'

A firework, thinks Kokoriko, _yes_. I can make a firework.

'If you don't want my help...' she trails off loftily.

'Oh no.' And Kokoriko blinks suddenly, as Hisoka appears in front of her, crouched over so his face hangs before her own like a cloud blotting over the sky. His hands rest sullenly over his knees, relaxed enough so that the material of his trousers flows beneath, unhindered by tight creases. His nails, she suddenly notices, are tightly shorn into points, like tiny claws. And to her eyes, they glint.

'No,' repeats Hisoka, 'I am rather interested in what sort of punishment you would design for me. What sort of revenge.'

She flinches. And Hisoka lets out a knowing smile.

'Oh yes, I took away your Pouf, mother-murderer he may be. But it doesn't wipe away everything you felt for him...' he narrows his eyes slightly. 'Does it?'

She shakes her head, mute.

'Come on then,' he coos, 'let's see what you've got.' And then with all the casualness of a viper, he grips hold of her hand, and with a force so strong that she is jerked forward slightly, he shoves her fingers against his cheek.

She blinks. She doesn't understand him. Is he really so confident that he can survive her? Or...her heart freezes slightly as she remembers Alluka cheerfully telling her about her healing abilities. Or rather, Nanika's. Does Hisoka know about that? Will he try to threaten her into healing him? Or are there other people out there, people he knows, who could work up a feasible antidote to whatever she chooses to run through his system?

In that case...

She breathes. Remembers the books Pouf had sometimes forced her to read, his long fingers delicately pointing out passages _he_ had found of interest.

'A monarch should be well-read,' he informed her, his nail tapping on the inky curve of a low-lying letter. 'Knowledge helps eliminate risks. Teaches you caution and prevents you rushing into traps. Makes you less gullible.'

Ah, she thinks fondly. You weren't always right, Shia-pouf. Here is someone who knows far more about the world than I do, and yet he rushes headfirst into my poison-stained fingers. He is so confident that he will either survive, or else what I put him through, will be worth the experience of learning, no, of _feeling. _

So she closes her eyes and concentrates, this time drawing on her memories of printed ink and fancy words, remembering the tap of Shia-pouf's finger as he read out each word in his clear, no-nonsense voice, imagining the grand flourish of each word as his excitement shone through his tone, transforming boring jargon into something fresh and new. His dramatics could sometimes rend dullness into drama, becoming a play he acted out with a hand across his brow, flicking away sweat, sometimes onto Youpi's very disgruntle side. He made her laugh, forcing the moment into something unforgettable.

And she is glad of it now, now that she can see into Hisoka and trace out the wry elements that bubble beneath. She can see the poison that spreads throughout his body, see it coiled up within his lungs like a rubber spring, ready to expand and strike. Gently, her nen touches it, stroking it so that it melts like a pool. Then, as though forming an imaginary fist, she grabs hold of it, dragging it away with a careful jerk, ignoring all the memories within the cells she swirls it away from, all the instincts that tell her that they remember what it is to be whole and undying. She leaves them ruined, torn, like blotted welts beneath the skin as she grips the toxicity and drives it home, into the bones, treading it down, deep down, into their very cores. And she watches as the marrow softens, trembles, more jellylike than ever before.

She takes time for a quick breath before she coaxes the poison into a baser form, for the first time instructing the cells within the poison itself to remember what they were, how they were separate elements before scientists brought them together in a beaker. Some were once closer to acid than venom and they start to eat, to paste bone and marrow together as they melt.

Hisoka trembles. She springs away. And stares as the hand, the hand he reaches out to strike her with, slows and crumbles, the flesh flopping into something mutated. The bones twitch, break, and flow like water within, and Hisoka's skin ruptures, wrinkling like a decompressing balloon. For he is a mess on the inside. A mess that forces him to slowness, slow enough for her to walk away. But not him. No, he'll have to crawl. Or slither. Like the snake you are, she thinks grimly. Look how I've made you finally fit your frame.

He chokes, dexterity lost as he fumbles, half-groping for a card.

'Goodbye,' she says. 'Perhaps I am more like my father than you thought. Worse, even.'

He cannot even reply.

Kokoriko turns, ready to leave the room. But before she can, a rich curve of brown catches her eyes. So she walks over and leans forwards, lifting away the thin slice of rock crushing its frame. A brown violin lies before her, its bow cast away and snapped against the smaller stones nearby.

She doesn't know why but she brings the instrument close to her chest, feeling it dig into the bones beneath. The wood jutts into her ribs as though in offense at how they mirror, even slightly, its own curved frame.

And then she cries, unsure of why.

* * *

Youpi is waiting for her, his feet solid and heavy against the ground outside the gates. He is kneeled, his back curved as though in solid prayer, as the ball of his thumb rests on the neck of a patrol soldier, pressing into the dip of his throat. The brown beard above touches his red skin, flirting with the brash colour as the wind gathers and draws it down, chopping into the sand-like waves.

Kokoriko sighs.

'You shouldn't have wished.'

'I didn't,' he says, 'the little girl told me I could ask. And she, or the other little girl, the one with dark eyes, could send me there.'

'Ask,' Kokoriko murmurs. 'Oh.' She feels foolish, as though she has failed some unseen test, one with an obvious answer. 'I-I never asked. I demanded.'

Youpi snorts, lifting his thumb from the human's throat. And, after one harsh, unbelieving moment, Kokoriko hears the man let go a shaky wheeze.

'You are the queen. You demand. It's what you do.' Youpi sys this calmly, with the air of someone for whom the world has fallen into its rightful place again. It is as though he has not done the impossible, and spared a witness to the foolish, sentimental trip to a place that holds meaning for them both.

'I think she would have liked it if I had asked,' Komugi says quietly. 'Then it would have been a favour. And if it's a favour...she can use her power as if it's something she wants to do. Rather than what someone demands of her.'

Youpi eyes her, then rolls his shoulder with an audible crack. 'If you want to 'ask' me to take you somewhere now, I'll do it.'

Softly, carefully, like a flower tentatively unfurling, a smile spreads against Kokoriko's lips. 'I'd like that.'

And, as if it were really that simple, Youpi's hand closes over her own.

* * *

Morel grits down on his pipe, pushing down with his teeth so hard that it almost cracks. Palm, at his side, stares down at the floor. At least, she thinks wryly, there's no blood on the carpet.

Meanwhile, Killua wraps another bandage around Alluka's wrist, his gaze set stonily on the cushion beside her. Yes, indeed, no blood had fallen onto the floor. Instead it has slipped down from Alluka's skin to flood the lining of the cushion she has set beneath it. But now it slumps against her side, the corner hanging against her sleeve like the slumped droop of a despondent puppy ear, and she is left to fight sniffles as Gon hovers over her, staring straight into her eyes.

'You granted a wish,' he said, 'and then you paid the price.'

Alluka nods. 'Youpi said he'd do it. But I said no. I...needed to know if I could pay the price for other people.'

Swiftly, Killua's hand lands on her head. And tenses, the fingers digging into her hair.

'That was stupid,' he says lowly, 'stupid and very dangerous.'

'I know, Brother.' Alluka smiles, something both sweet and sad in her expression. 'But I needed to know, just as I know that you would never have let me, had I asked. And I think the cost was softened slightly. Nanika really hates it when I cry.'

Killua looks at her wrist, at the way the joint forces itself into a screaming twist and then at the ball of her shoulder, and the way it's been forced into an eruption of bruises. He draws her hair back softly, enough to reveal the blotted purple of her ear. And feels the anger in him rising, in a sad, cold emotion that clouds his mind, the way it did back when Gon used to rush off and leave him behind.

'Alluka...' is all he can think to say.

'I'm sorry I hurt you Brother,' she says. 'But I couldn't let any of you hurt that girl.'

'She might hurt other people,' Morel says calmly, though everyone in the room can hear the red-hot strain beneath, that turbulent temper that rolls beneath and leaves his tone icy and composed.

Alluka smiles bitterly. 'So might I. That's a danger that will never go away.' She breathes in deep. 'But that never stopped Brother from setting me free.'

* * *

Sometimes revenge is not pre-planned. And sometimes it runs cold instead of hot. That's what Kokoriko learnt today.


	15. New world, not brave and not true

Kokoriko does not enter another gungi tournament. There is no room for one, not in the crowded, half-collasped streets of Meteor City. There are however, enough people who have heard the name of the game, for her to play against, people who have run far enough away from East Gorteau to not blink twice at her shape when she sits before them, on the other side of the board.

Youpi is still her faithful guard, her friend, though he will probably never admit to such. His biology prevents him, though his brain still shifts, and, on quiet evenings, she can encourage him to mingle with the crowds that gather at a run-down tavern comprised of broken church glass and the diagonal slant of a fallen skyscraper. There are no doors to enter, only groaning spaces where walls should have been, more than enough room for someone like him to step into and chug down a full gallon of whatever watered-down mead they can find. Alcohol, it seems, is now richer than gold.

Perhaps one day they will move, find another place to roam. She has heard rumours of a man who could be the twin of the late Supreme Leader Diego, out in the wavering grass of some far away country, his back carefully nestled by the crook of his rocking chair. Supposedly he plays a mean game.

And yet, here in this city, she does not always have the space for such a daydream. On occasion, she is pulled out of it by someone with enough ability to challenge her. It happens on one such evening when she plays against a man who wears his face in the shadows, keeping his hood high enough for his neck to sink completely into the black. And she finds herself engrossed, drawn into the game like a hypnotised rabbit, leaning forward enough to hear the quick slide and snick of a snake's tongue darting free of his mouth. So she does not lean in too closely.

To her surprise, she loses. So she sits up, and, abandoning all grace, stares hard into the golden eyes that twinkle out at her like a cat's.

'Thank you,' he says. 'This was all very illuminating.'

'You're the first chimera ant I've met who doesn't dive into servitude at the mere sight of me,' she replies dryly. 'It makes for a nice change. That and the, urgh, losing.'

He chuckles. 'Your species gave me a new lease of life. Afforded me a broader...vision if you will. I have much to be grateful for. But still, I must ask; to you intend to build a colony here?'

His tone has not changed, but, out of the corner of her eyes, she sees Youpi's head swivel round, the barrel he was drinking from already thumping to the floor.

'No,' she says. 'Motherhood has no appeal. Not without someone to share it with.'

He pauses, and though his face is still covered, Kokoriko swears she can feel something run over it, something silent and profound.

'That's very wise of you,' he murmurs. 'A child should not be brought out into this world without love to lean into. You could create a monster that way.'

She feels her lips part to bear a grin. And instinctively knows that he is doing the same. What are they, mirrors?

'My name is Kokoriko,' she tells him. 'I don't suppose you would tell me your own.'

He pauses. 'Gyro,' he says shortly, and then, with barely seconds to spare dives back into the swirl of people that are busy faking their own drunkenness. Kokoriko watches as the crowd swallows him up like a dragon, the tattered clothing and cracked glasses taking on the dull glint of scales, as their limbs flail out in jagged motions, much like the sawing heave of teeth.

She has the feeling that somehow, Gyro is more powerful than any dragon could hope to be.

* * *

Later that night, she has a dream. Two figures, heads bent over the gungi board as though they were nothing more than statues chiselled out of marble. But then one breathes, one moves. And a finger sneaks out to push a piece forwards. Kokoriko squints. Leans forwards. But she cannot get closer, cannot make out the lines of their faces.

'I feel...' A tail lashes across the floor, irritable and heavier than her own as the male speaks. 'This is foolishness, but still the feeling remains. The idea that you are familiar.'

The smaller, tail-less form opposite him pauses to digest this. And then she places a tile next to his own in a delicate diagonal sweep.

'I sometimes feel that way about a move I play,' she says, her words slurred, no, chipped with an accent Kokoriko thinks is unfamiliar. But it is an accent that nonetheless, causes the heartbeat within her dream to race. 'I think to myself, why have I never thought of this before! How could I have been so foolish, so dim-witted, to not have stumbled upon such a strategy? I feel impatient and horrified at myself when this happens. Because the game has been played for a million, no more...err...many, many times before. And perhaps someone has played the moves I invent before, perhaps they were only used once and never recorded. Perhaps they were truly invented by someone far less fortunate than myself, someone who never managed to be born in a time or place where they could travel to tournaments and reach fame. Perhaps I am simply stealing moments in time that existed before I came to them.'

The human (for what else can she be besides human!)frowns, unsure how to continue. She's played her move and _he_ has yet to make his. But still, something must tug at her heart, and at her loose, desperate mouth because her tongues stumbles, her heart falling half into her throat as she continues. 'B-b-but whatever the truth...t-th-hey are mine now. I find these moves and I n-n-name them! And each one, each time I play them, ev-ev-even for the first time...it feels like coming home.'

The other player shoots her a quick glance, though she cannot feel the weight of it pressing in on her, his eyes narrow and calculating. What she can feel, what Kokoriko, watching, can feel, is his assessment of her, both quick and furtive. It burrows into her nerves with the silence that surrounds them, heavy and uncomfortable and despite herself, she fidgets, knees squirming against both the dirt and her skirt

Home,' says Meruem softly. 'The one place you have never been comfortable?'

The player pauses, her outstretched fingers catching on air. 'I am grateful for my family,' she answers quietly. 'Without them, I would not be here.'

'But they do not make you happy.'

There is no question in his voice, not this time.

She breathes in. 'No.'

It is a small word. Small but powerful. And ultimately, freeing.

And then both statues, both people, both _parents,_ turn to Kokoriko.

'Find it,' says one.

'Please,' says the other.

And Kokoriko wakes.

'Youpi,' she will say later, 'it's time to move on.'

And, as always, he will agree.

* * *

Through deserts, valleys, across boats on seas, Kokoriko will stand and walk. And Youpi will keep pace with her, each stride easily worth two of her own. He will breathe and she will count, her hand pressing against his wrist whenever she fears his heartbeats will slow. She will there, always there, to catch him when he finally falls.

And then (and it may take years) she will be alone.

She rubs her stomach and smiles. Alone, but maybe not for long. At least, in this, she will have a choice. And for once, there will be no one's voice other than her own, telling her what to do.

For she will not obey Pouf and Hisoka, their desires lost to the past, but still ringing in her head. And she will not adhere to the wishes of Palm and Morrel, nice as they were. But she will remember Gon and Alluka, for allowing her a choice and being kind when they had no cause to be.

For that she will not carve out a hole in humanity. She will only, perhaps, allow a few eggs to ripen to maturity. And if she cannot stop laying more, well...perhaps she should start, while Youpi is around, so she can ask him to destroy the rest. Or maybe after laying a few she can sterilise herself. There are hunters, doctors she can track down, who she can cohere into stripping her of the all the parts they all fear.

Either way, she can create a family. After all, if it brought her mother and father happiness, who is to say it cannot gift her with the same?

But for now, she seeks the guideline of a dream. Home. Something, she guesses, where someone will decide to keep breathing beside her.

She glances up at Youpi with a grin, unaware of how his heavy shadow falls into her smile, to render it spooky, like a cloud dappling over the moon. And he grunts, unaware, as his breathing slips into the mirrored pattern of her own. And yet, his eyes glance over when she giggles, her feet already jumping into a mutated hopscotch between the marks his heavy toes behind. And unbidden, his heart races, all to match the tempo her increased pulse sets up, giving birth to a faster pace that matches her great dives across the sand.

This, Kokoriko realises, is perhaps what led her father into loving a human, all that time ago, back when he decided to let everything else slide away. And she can more than afford to do the same. This..'home', is something she has discovered for herself. Something she will keep. Swallow down. And force her into warmth.


	16. Is dear reader, for you

In the breeze, under trees, Gon races, green flashing against his face as the sunlight plays with the branches overhead. The leaves filter the gold against his skin, skin that has browned, turned hard as a nut over the last few weeks of constant sun-exposure and he laughs, feeling his lungs burn as Killua lets out a small whoop beside him. Gon turns back with a smile, and a shake of his head.

'Fun, huh?'

Killua wrinkles his nose, but does not disagree.

But then Gon's head tilts to the side, his ears catching hold of the thin crack of noise grass makes when it is snapped underfoot, and he darts into the darkened hollows of the bushes beside the path, Killua not a step behind. They wait until someone comes out, tumbling through a billow of yellow weeds and dusty, sun-cracked leaves; all evidence of drought, set against the weaker and less durable plants in the area. Or perhaps they are simply the dust-swirled leftovers from some crusty spokes of wheat.

But Gon's attention quickly leave these small gold scatterings and instead he feels his breath escape his throat. For there, before him, stands someone that once upon a time, he killed. Then he blinks, a contortion running over his face. No, this is wrong, all wrong, the shape is wrong, smaller, and the scent is too...too...fluttery.

But this 'fluttery' person stops. Stares. Blinks back into the shadows with round, golden eyes, then flicks his hair back, the white curls running like a wave over his neck.

'Hmph,' he sniffs, one of his ears twitching. 'Come out. I can smell you.'

Killua snorts. 'Not very bright, is he? Can't even tell how much stronger we are.'

But Gon's eyes remain fixed on the ears poking through the hair, on that tail that runs, long and slender, through the grass. It's thin, like a whip or a bone, thin like Neferpit- he stops before he can remember the name entirely. It calls on him, tugs at his anger and he narrows his eyes at the bleed of colour that stains the white in front of him, the difference freeing him from the unwanted mermory. He finds himself focusing on those scarlet stripes that tuck their way round the tail like a tiger's, bearing all the stiff strangeness of a scar, like a great dragon's claws had marred the sleek twist of muscle in-between. And the ears...looking closer, they look nothing like _that person's_. They belong more to a bobcat than a domestic pet's, taped off into curved tuffs like upright pears and coated with warm grey spots, like freckles.

It only takes a second, but he steps into the light. And with that move, he travels back in time. For the little cat flings itself at him, bloodlust stretching out from the menace of its leap, it's claws hooking into the air. And perhaps Gon would have felled its flight, reaching out to pluck it from the air with a sickening crunch, except, at that moment, the creature, with it's eyes staring and afraid, hisses out, '_stay away from my mother!_'

\- and Killua is suddenly there beside him, his hand wrapped tightly round Gon's wrist. He reaches out beyond Gon's stillness, his hand extending in a pale flash to tug at the ruff of fur flung out from their attacker's neck in a bristled clump. But the cat-like being still screeches regardless, as though he really _has_ been shocked, coming to spin from the fingers of Killua's hand like a puppet.

'We don't kill kids,' Killua says firmly. 'And we talk to their parents before fighting them.' He turns a quick eye on Gon. 'Right?'

Gon can only nod. It seems the right thing to do because Killua smiles at him, gently.

'Right then.' Killua turns with a smirk to their prisoner, giving him a good shake, hard enough for him to let out a planative yowl. 'Where's your mommy, kid?'

Surprise, surprise, the kid glares at them and refuses to utter a word.

Gon sighs. Right then. Tracking skills, it is.

* * *

They spend the next ten minutes running through fields that crinkle at their edges with the rot of a dry summer, the snap of brown stalks ringing out like cracked bones against Gon's shins. Annoying enough, hardly a whisper emerges from Killua's feet, despite the fact that Gon can see his shoes landing where his own had been only moments before. But before the grumble can rise out of his throat, out ahead looms the small shape of a house, its sides comprised entirely of wood.

And on the porch an old man sits, rocking to and fro in a large chair, his weight making the boards creak with a gentleness unbecoming of the three boys and their own harsh, field-snapping cracks. And yet all he does, upon seeing them, is lift his pipe out of his mouth and beam.

'Hello, hello! It's always nice to have visitors! Would you care for some poetry?' Then he frowns. 'I would appreciate it though, if you let Shia go. It's not good to support a young man from his neck like that.'

Shia spits at him. 'Where's mother?'

'Out paying her respects. Which is more than I can say for you.'

Despite the uncomfortable clench of Killua's fingers on the back of his neck, Shia finds it within himself to roll his eyes. 'Yeah, yeah. I'll wash the dishes later.'

'No, not later. Now.' He looks at Killua expectantly. 'If you wouldn't mind.'

Nonplussed, Killua lets Meruem's grandson drop and Shia delivers a glare in return, before scampering off inside the house with a bounding trot, that, for some reason, appears more dog-like than cat. The man watches him with a fond smile.

'It's good to be young, isn't it?'

Gon lets his lips rise in a smile that for once, he doesn't feel. 'Yeah, I guess. I mean I do enjoy it! But thats not what we need to talk about. Where's his mother?'

The man frowns.

'I believe I already said so. Out paying her respects.'

* * *

Kokoriko has had an uneventful day. And yet, each sullen petal she presses to the ground makes her feel as though a spark of occasion has lit the air around her. She pauses, glancing up at the stone cross hammered down into the soil with muscles more suited for thumping down gungi tiles than erecting grave markers.

'Purple today,' she says softly. 'I don't think you ever had a favourite colour, Youpi; you were too indecisive for that. Or perhaps, you were simply too wrapped up in the decisions I made, than to worry about your own.' She lets her breath flutter out, then allows it to roll back in, bringing with it the delicate stir of lavender. 'At least here, you won't have to worry anymore.'

* * *

There is no fighting when she arrives back home. Only a slight widening of the eyes as she see who her two guests are. Her son races over to her immediately, tugging at her hand with his own as he swings round to level another glare at the humans.

'He is my only progeny,' she informs them stiffly, ignoring the way her heart seems to gallop through her veins, and all the fury that rises with it. 'Call your doctors, your nen healers; they will confirm it with their own eyes and see all the scars I had to pay for it.'

Her son's ears flatten again. 'Moooother,' he whines. 'Gross...'

'I have had no more', she continues, her voice prim and ready to delve into coldness at a moment's notice. 'Again, all things people with different skill-sets from your own can confirm.'

Gon looks at her. 'Hm,' he says, but the consideration there, for all of one second, reminds her of Hisoka and she shivers before his natural warmth creeps in to shake the timbre out of his voice. 'You're telling the truth. I can tell.'

'The father?' Killua asks, his eyes sweeping over her son yet again, and raking out another hiss from him in the process.

She shakes her head. 'I am not my mother. I am a chimera queen. The 'fathers' as you would call them, are all bit and pieces of the things I ate prior to having him.'

Both of them stiffen. And she laughs, loud and rancorous, taking delight in how very Pouf-like she sounds.

'Oh no, don't worry. Not a drop of human blood has passed over my tongue since the last time we met.'

* * *

_'Take it,' he had begged, almost spat, as his head fell, lodging its way into her lap. 'Take it. It is yours to do whatever you want with it.'_

_She doubts even now, that he had had understood the metaphor twisted in with his offer, what with the beseeching look in his eyes and the way his fist formed a knot over his heart._

_Take it, rip it out,' he had demanded, and she had had to stifle her gasp, as the blood spurted out from between his teeth in rivers that swum with chucks, meshed-up flesh that she could not restore or shove back in._

_Everything had a limit, and she was not god. Not even close. _

_'Take it.'_

_It was the first thing that he had wanted from her, had framed in a way that was more than a request. And how could she possibly refuse it?_

_'I forgive you for leaving me,' she muttered, trying not to sound too sulky about it, before her nails ripped in, diving through his innards as they sought out his heart. With a squeeze and a pull, it slapped its way into her palm, writhing like a fish. And then it sank, deflating like a balloon as Youpi's eyes bulged and his breath rose out in a twisting gasp, his spirit fleeing alongside it._

_She waited there for a while, just long enough for the blood to harden like plastic against her fingers. Then, with one deft motion, she swallowed his heart, hating it's taste. For it tasted hard and rubbery, as though it had been packed into the chest of a war-horse, trained in battlefields to mow down men who fled and wailed in fear of its canter._

_Kokoriko took a breath, then another, stealing herself. Then she lowered her head to the rest of the body, the body that was not Youpi anymore. And began to chew._

* * *

She pauses.

'The fact that my boy walks, can talk like you, I owe it all to my loyalist friend.'

Gon frowns. And a flicker runs over Killua's face. But the expression it creates is nothing like disgust.

'Yeah,' he says, 'loyalty. It's a pain to deal with, huh?'

Kokoriko turns her face to the sun. 'You have no idea.'

'Actually,' says Killua softly, 'yeah, I kinda do.'

She turns back to him, considering. And remembers the glare of his hair and the way electricity had crackled round its surface as he stared at her, back in that cave another lifetime ago. She had sensed danger from him, felt it in the way he brushed his fingertips against the light that touched him, sparks he had sent out into the dark to dance before her eyes with the smell of lightening. She remembers the taste of it, sharp and corrosive, like acid. She remembers how it had run deep, frying her tongue with its scent. But only, _only_ when she talked to Gon.

'Yes,' she acknowledges, 'perhaps you do.'

There is silence for a time. And for once Gon actually looks uncomfortable.

'Who's the-'

'-geezer,' Killua interrupts him, jamming his thumb in the direction of the man, still cheerfully swaying backwards and forwards, inside the curved slopes of his chair. It rises to loom over his shoulders like the outstretched hood of a cobra and helps to form an eeiree, almost hypnotic picture, with the way he refuses to stop smiling.

Briefly, Gon wonders if this is what other people feel like dealing with him.

'It doesn't matter,' says Kokoriko. 'Who he is now, doesn't matter. Just what he chooses to do _now_.'

Well. There is certainly weight in her words, and it leaves everyone feeling uncomfortable. And perhaps that should press in on everyone, lean on their souls with something akin to the force of gravity, except, right that second, comes the crash of dishes. And then, in their wake, a quiet, 'opps.'

The smiling man places his pipe in his mouth while Kokoriko rolls her eyes.

'Hard isn't it,' she calls out wryly. 'Eavesdropping and washing up at the same time. Maybe next time you'll do your chores when I tell you to, instead of leaving them for later.'

'Moooom... '

'No whining! '

Gon bursts out laughing. 'You're like Mito-san and me!'

Kokoriko tilts her head to one side. 'Is that a good or bad thing?'

Gon pauses. But before he can answer, Killua's voice cuts across his hesitation like a whip.

'It's good,' the former assassin says roughly, like there's a waiting cough wedged down inside his throat, ready to rush out. 'Very good. As long as the kid isn't afraid to whine to you about the work you give them, then it's good.'

* * *

Kokoriko does not invite them in for tea. And as they leave, Killua finds himself glaring back, through their tiny window to where Shia has raised a single finger above the smashed crockery, all in the grand showmanship of the young and very rude.

'Oh,' says Gon. 'That's pretty rude of him. Mito-san would definitely have never taught me _that_.'

'Bet that creepy old man did.'

But Gon is already looking at him, his mind switching over to a different thought as he gives him a level stare. 'We're not gonna report this,' he says, phrasing it like an order.

Killua doesn't mind.

'No, ' he agrees, thinking of Alluka and the way she is waiting for them both, down in a lodge only two towns over from the middle of nowhere. 'No. It would be too boring anyway.'

* * *

Shia dreams that night. He dreams of leaving, of wandering halls of glass and marble, of pressing his feet against sand that burns deep enough to leave whorls of red on his toes. He dreams of pressing his jaws into quivering meat, of racking up points he wins from people other than his mother. He dreams of the melody she has picked up from books, of the tune she saws on mended strings from the violin she only ever allows him to slide his fingers against.

He dreams of winning.

Later, he wakes up to that same melody, the long, slow thrust of sound spilling out from under his mother's stiff fingers.

'Does it have a name, yet?' he asks her, not expecting any real answer in return.

But Kokoriko, mother, queen of no one, not even him, turns, the clouds pulling over the moon just as her expression slips into his hazy sleep-tinted view.

'I think,' she replies, 'that it is called a lullaby.'

He snorts. 'That's not a proper title.'

'No,' utters the old man, now free from his rocking chair, 'no it's not. But I was once a king and I can tell you, for free in fact, that titles are not as important as they seem.'

Shia rolls his eyes. He does not believe that the man who claims to be the former leader of East Gorteau was ever more than a farmer who likes to rest his spine against wood.

'Whatever. What do you know? One day, I'm gonna leave this dump.'

Kokoriko's bow, the one she has spent afternoons fashioning out of the stems of saplings and thin quirks of hay, pauses, with a quiver, to rest against a string.

'I know. But when you do, I hope you will not let others twist your name into a different shape. Not even for a title.'

Shia stares at her.

'No,' she tells him firmly. 'You have years to grow into, before you can come up with your own answers.'

And then, like magic, her bow starts to etch out the next melody in her mind.

'Hmm,' she says. 'I like this one. I think I shall call it, 'home.''

* * *

Notes: Wow. When I started this story, I originally thought it would be nothing more than a short six-chaptered fic about Meruem and Komugi. And look...what ended up happening. It's been a big long trip for me, and hopefully some of that rubbed off on a few of the readers, if they managed to make it this far. I guess I have a lot of mixed feelings about what I've done, case in point being the title. To date, the title of this fic is the one I have struggled with the most, out of all my works. 'Domestic Divergence', always felt a little wrong, a bit pompous whenever it flashed up into my face. And yet...and yet, I pondered, what else I could call it?

It is only now, trotting out these last two chapters, that I realise, finally, what this story is about. Finding somewhere to call home. It should have been obvious, and maybe it was to some of the readers here, but it was not, at least not to me, until I typed in the last, final word, of this fic.

And I'm...I'm not sure whether I will end up changing the title of this fic. But if I do it will probably be to something like 'Home', or 'Discovering Home'.

And I'm sorry to those of you, who wanted something more big, or epic or sprawling. I knew this would never be that and would always be more character driven. Though I will confess, a part of me feels a little truimph that I managed to kill off Hisoka, of all people. Jeez.

At any rate, thanks to those of you who commented, or wished me well through some other means of communication. Its been a year, almost, and finally, finally, I can look back and say 'I'm finished. I achieved something great.' Hopefully, some of you will feel the same.

* * *

Edit: I was recently queried about certain aspects of this story that left a reader slightly confused. Although I did send them a message detailing some of my thoughts on the matter, I figured I would copy and paste them here as well, in this more public venue, in case any other reader held the same questions.

For example, although I never revealed the precise words Kokoriko spoke to Alluka when she made her wish, it was implyed the following chapter that she wished to be delievered to the place her parents met. This was so that she could gain a better understanding of who they were, and so by extension gain a better understanding of who she was, as opposed to the way others in the fic were focused on WHAT she is and the danger, or in Pouf and Hisoka's case, the hope she represents.

This was all meant to lead into her greater wish to find a home for herself, something she was not really capable of verbalising, or indeed able to think of in more specific terms, until the prophectic dream involving the figures of her parents occcured later on, which is partly why she was unable to express such a thing to Alluka at the time. It was not really a thing that could be listed in a series of clear-cut steps and I did try to leave hints - I'm pretty sure I have Kokoriko ruminate, during her exploration of the palace, on why she didn't ask Allluka to take her to the hut where she was born, another place where she might have developed a sense of who her parents were as people, for example.

Kokoriko, as some other real-life orphans do, just knew that something was missing, some sense of understanding about herself. She felt she lacked information, or at least a solid foundation for herself, and Alluka was basically a handy way for her to remove herself from the watchful company surrounding her without further bloodshed, all in order to help achieve this hole-filling. Or it gave her the illusion of doing so, at any rate.

As for Youpi, he did not make a wish. He rather pointedly doesn't. As he told Kokoriko, Alluka gave him the choice of asking. And when Nanika grants you a favour, like she does for Killua, there seems to be no obvious rebound, or cost for it. And...I guess I delved into non-cannonical territory here. I have seen someone say somewhere, that one of the frightening things about Alluka's family was that they sought ways of controlling her rather than sitting down and talking to her and that maybe, if they had tried to understand her like Killua, Nanika would have granted them requests as well. But they never did. They never ASKED.

Also since Youpi offered to pay the cost for Kokoriko's wish, that softened Alluka and Nanika towards him as well. But he never acually made a proper wish and phrased it as such, unless asking to be taken to where Kokoriko was, counts.

As for his death, well that was an inevitable consequence of being exposed to the Rose Bomb back in the first chapter. The difference was, unlike Pouf, Meruem and Komugi, he was the only one of them who lived long enough to actually die from it. All their lives were cut short before the poison could kill them completely. And indeed, the chapter prior to the last had Kokoriko reflecting on how she knew he was not going to last for too much longer. Which was why she killed him before he stopped breathing, because he asked her too, because he WISHED for it. His whole life, he had only ever wanted to service the king and then her, and then, with his body failing him, the last valuble thing he could offer is sustenance.


End file.
